Far From Paradise
by cherry valence
Summary: The bombing of The Glades changed everything. No one could stay the same after the world they knew shattered before their eyes. Post S1.
1. Nothing To Lose

Far From Paradise

_Nothing to Lose _

. . .

Summary: The bombing of The Glades changed everything. No one could stay the same after the world they knew shattered before their eyes. Post S1.

Note: The concept that this story originated came from a short character arc of the Oliver Queen character in season 9 of Smallville, the idea of the downfall of a hero post-tragedy and the recovery. I've been outlining this story pretty meticulously since the finale and after outlining it all summer, I've got the start ready to share. It'll come in 4 installments, with, the second up by the end of this week with any luck at all.

. . .

_"There is greater darkness than the one we fight, it is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities; it is against chaos, and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us, we know only that it is always born in pain."_

_-William Faulkner_

The steps of the courthouse weren't an unfamiliar place for Oliver. Still, he walked away, fighting his way through a crowd of flashing camera lights and reporters pressing in close. He stumbled, and felt Digg's eyes burning into his back, as he offered a hand to help.

He didn't need Digg to tell him, or to judge him for coming to the sentencing still drunk from the night before. Oliver knew it.

Oliver knew he was damning himself with the decisions he was making.

"C'mon Oliver," Digg said, seeing the car pull up in front of the street. "Go home, sleep it off."

"And what? It'll all be better in the morning?" Oliver retorted sarcastically.

It wasn't going to bring Tommy back, it wasn't going to change that his mother had been a participant in the Glades Genocide…it wasn't going to change the fact that his father asked him for one thing, made one request of him before he killed himself—to fix his mistakes; and all he did was pile onto the mistakes himself.

All he'd done was make it worse.

The air was dense with humidity and the bellow of a hundred voices at once calling his name, and he felt a desperation for the solitude of the island. It was an overwhelming ache of failure that was consuming him every single day.

"Oliver, Oliver!"

He brushed against microphones and bodies, and flashing cameras as Digg propelled them through the crowd, pausing for a second when he caught a glimpse of a face he knew. James Slater, he was the one who broke the story six years ago when he and Tommy were busted with cocaine. James Slater, who also ousted him to the gossip rags each of the three times he cheated on Laurel.

It felt like a lifetime ago. He hadn't seen or spoken to Laurel since Tommy's funeral, where she told him that she was leaving to spend some time with her mother. It was probably for the best, being around him wasn't good for anyone.

"With Merlyn out of the picture, it's coming up all aces for you Queen." Slater shoved his camera in Oliver's face. "What's next for you?"

It was like all the frustration and anger that had boiling inside of him for a week erupted to the surface. Slater stepped in his path, and before Digg could intervene-protecting him from his temper again-Oliver hit him and sent the reporter sprawling in the sidewalk. The masses descended on them, and Digg let loose with a string of obscenities.

It was with a moment of slackened astonishment that Oliver watched for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut in horror and realizing he might have crossed the line—again. His temper had gone unchecked and he'd lost himself in his rage. Any guilt that he might have felt though was replaced by an overwhelming feeling of...relief.

It had felt good.

"Damn you, Oliver!" He pushed Oliver toward the car, shaking off the throng of people as he yanked the door open and shoved him in. "Go home. Stay there!"

Digg slammed the door shut, and banged on the hood to tell the driver to get out of there.

. . .

In her oversized polka-dotted armchair, Felicity Smoak curled her legs underneath her, and wrapped her hands around her coffee, trying to shirk her glance away from the TV and not being entirely able to do so.

She didn't think that she would ever feel as badly as she had when the ceiling of Verdant trembled over her head, or that she would feel as heart achingly sick as when she realized that for all their effort they had miscalculated Malcolm Merlyn with his second bomb in the subway; but then she started turning on the news the first night, unable to crawl into her bed and sleep knowing that a third of the city was homeless—or worse.

It looked like they were profiling a war zone.

For the first few days, she found herself crying at the images of the battered, the beaten, and the hopeless. She'd watched as they pulled bodies from the rubble, a man running from a collapsing building with a bloodied child in his hands desperately crying for the help that had yet to come.

So she watched, and she wondered, and she tried to figure out where they had gone so wrong. All morning she'd been afraid to turn on her TV. She knew that it was the first day of proceedings in the state's case against Moira Queen.

Felicity glanced at her coffee table and the subpoena to testify that she hadn't opened glared back at her. It had been haunting at her for three days now, and she knew that there would be no out from that—not even Oliver could rescue her from it, and she would have to answer.

What was she thinking anyways? Oliver certainly wasn't…he was barely taking care of himself these days, not that she could blame him. In one fell swoop, he'd lost his mother and his best friend.

Lately, it even seemed like he'd lost his purpose.

Finally, unable to put it off any longer, she picked up her remote and turned on the news.

_Outside of the Starling City Courthouse this morning, we were treated to another example of the Queens' arrogance. Following his mother's hearing, Oliver Queen was departing the court house when he assaulted a questioning reporter…_

"Oh Oliver," Felicity whispered, shaking her head as she watched the reporter hit the concrete hard and lay there without moving.

It wasn't good.

She picked the remote back up and muted the volume, watching as he stood there after the altercation, Digg shoving him into the black sedan.

Oliver had been falling apart, and at first she had blamed it on his grief. Regardless of anything and everything that had progressed between him and Tommy Merlyn, she knew—losing Tommy had torn Oliver apart. But it had become so much more than that.

He was drinking for the record, shut down the club, and as far as she could tell he closed himself up inside of Verdant with the intention of drinking himself to death, punishing himself thoroughly because apparently he'd decided that every last unfolding here had been his fault, some error of judgment on his part.

A moment passed and —in that moment the station had replayed the altercation three times—she heard a knock on her door.

She sighed, getting up slowly and unlocking her door. As she opened it, she realized that again she had forgotten to look through the peephole. The news was warning people to use all due caution, but her head was still in a cloud.

Felicity decided that she would get dressed and brave the streets to go to the mansion. Someone needed to talk to Oliver, it couldn't go on like this. It just couldn't.

"Oliver!"

She was stunned when she pulled open her door and found him standing there. As he stood there, she grabbed his hand and pulled him in the door, slamming it shut behind him.

"Oliver, you were just on the news."

"I know." Oliver said, pulling off the sunglasses and folding them his eyes red and bloodshot, with dark circles below his eyes.

He ran his hand through his hair.

"You're not looking so hot," Felicity said, "You know, for you that's…"

Her voice trailed off, losing it somewhere in the middle. Oliver looked like a shell. It scared her to see him like this. This was not her hero.

"I've got coffee." She said, "Are you hungry? Have you consumed anything that's less than twenty percent alcohol the last few days? Because…because you should."

He shook his head, not even remarking upon the rebuke in her tone.

"I won't be here long."

Felicity felt her face fall as he said it, and forced herself to smile approvingly even though she thought she'd like to cry.

"Good. I'm sure Thea needs you back at home, this must be hard for her."

"That's why I'm here." Oliver said, "I know that you worry."

"You have no idea." Felicity said, relieved that he actually saw it. That he wasn't on his own, that she cared about him—that she would be whatever he needed, she was in his corner.

"Don't." Oliver said simply. "You're a very intelligent, capable woman, Felicity and I'm sorry that I got you entangled in my web. I can't apologize enough for that."

"I don't want an apology, Oliver." Felicity said, anxiously turning her hands over, finally crossing her arms just to try and hide her anxiety. "I want—I _want_ you to be okay again, you're not—this person you're being right now isn't the Oliver I know."

"No." Oliver put his sunglasses back on, "Your naïveté is startling sometimes."

He smiled slowly, "The Oliver you think you know—I'm not that guy. It's over."

"So what are you going to do?" Felicity asked, feeling tears burn behind her eyes at his stinging words. "What about your sister?"

"She'll be fine." Oliver said, "Walter will return from London, he'll look after her. She knows him better than me anyways."

"I'm not a very reliable guy." Oliver lingered at the door, seeming to realize that she wasn't done. He seemed to recognize that she wasn't going to let this end so easily.

"You're not being yourself Oliver!" Felicity tried to plead with him as he turned his back on her. "I know you, you're a hero! You're better than this."

"I'm a damaged billionaire with a bow and arrow and too much time on my hands." Oliver said with his hand on the doorknob, a tone of self-derision evident in his voice.

"Goodbye Felicity."

. . .

Digg let go of an exasperated breath of air when he watched Detective Quentin Lance walk his way. Of all the detectives in the Metro division of this city, how was it that this man was dispatched every time Oliver did something incredibly stupid.

He was sure that there were other cops that would love to collar Oliver.

Getting Oliver out of this situation wasn't going to be an easy task. The part of it that was eating away at him though, he wasn't even sure that Oliver cared anymore. Some days, it felt like Oliver was just itching to throw away this life he had, that there was nothing worth fighting for anymore.

Digg had been sure that Oliver was stronger than that, that he knew the parameters of the mission better. But now, even he was finding himself doubting Oliver. You couldn't make someone believe a mission, and he didn't know how to re-light the fire of self and purpose that Oliver had lost along with the Glades.

James Slater had been shipped off to the Starling City Hospital, writhing in pain. Digg hadn't seen someone suffer so badly since his convoy on his second tour ran over an IED. They had enough problems without Gloria Allred dragging Oliver into court for a civil suit, never mind some sort of assault charges levied by a detective who hated him.

He didn't know what to do with Oliver. God knew, he understood how it felt to lose a friend, to stand there helplessly and watch that light go out of their eyes—it felt a lot like watching Oliver go off the rails now. It was just going to be a far slower death than Tommy's if they couldn't shake Oliver out of it.

"Detective." Digg regarded Detective Lance cautiously, wondering if he'd had Oliver lo-jacked so he'd have the pleasure of arresting him at any given opportunity.

He wouldn't put it past him.

"Mr. Diggle." Detective Lance sighed, and shook his head. "This is a hell of a problem, isn't it?"

It almost sounded akin to sympathy in the detective's voice, and Digg proceeded cautiously.

"Slater shoved the camera in his face, he was just trying to regain his personal space and get to the car." Diggle said, "It was an accident. I know your heart isn't exactly bleeding for him, but it's been a hard time. The paparazzi have been hard to shake."

"Hm…" Lance nodded his head once, scrubbing his hand over his face.

He gestured to his squad car. "Talk with me, will you?"

"I can do that." Digg said.

"I take it Mr. Queen is not here." Lance said, "Would I be correct in that assessment Mr. Diggle?"

"I weighed the consequences of my charge being mobbed in the craze or being safely removed from the equation." Diggle said, "It's what I'm paid for."

"My plate's gotten heavy the last week, Mr. Diggle—I'm sure you watch the news like the rest of us." Lance said, "The city is filled with anger, and they're crying out for blood. They're running out of options though. Moira Queen and Malcolm Merlyn are being tried for their crimes, and regardless of the punishment that our justice system doles out—they are not going to be satisfied. We have the National Guard patrolling the streets, and they still aren't safe enough—people want blood."

"I understand." Diggle said, pulling off his sunglasses and looking down at the Detective. "If you don't mind me asking, why would you of all people choose to put your job on the line to help Mr. Queen."

"He didn't kill anyone." Lance's stance seemed to waver, as if conceding to the fact that all these years of blaming Oliver for his daughter's death had been wrong. "I don't like to say it, but for what it is…he seems like a better man than the one I knew."

"He was." Diggle said darkly, worried that the piece of Oliver that brought him to the man he was today was being chipped away at, barely a presence to be seen.

Dissolving in the pool of liquor, and rage, and self-hate.

"Children shouldn't be paying for the sins of their parents." Lance said with a slight nod of his head.

Diggle turned away from the detective, pulling his ringing cell phone from his pocket. He didn't know why he was surprised to see Felicity phoning. Certainly she had seen the progression of bad to worse on the news, and just as surely she was sitting in her apartment, on the border of hysteria after what was being broadcast.

God, she worried. He wondered as he answered his phone, if Oliver would ever realize that the girl was in love with him.

"Digg!" Felicity's voice gasped into his ear, and for a moment he thought she was in danger.

"Felicity, are you okay?"

"Oliver was just here." She said, sounding like she'd been crying.

He couldn't blame her, Oliver had that effect on most of the people in his life lately.

Laurel had left the city after Tommy's funeral and he'd heard her screaming at him from well into the opposite wing of the house before that, Thea seemed to have given up trying; resorting to burrowing away, licking her own wounds and pain.

Roy Harper was still missing.

She needed the supervision that Walter Steele's return would give her, the security of a parent to protect her. It really was for the best that Oliver asked him to return, because he wasn't in a place to take care of himself, never mind a hurting girl.

_Farther from home, closer…_

Digg shook it off, not quite able to place the saying. He heard his brother's voice in his ear like a dull buzz, unable to finish the thought.

"He left. He was supposed to go home." Digg said in a grunt of frustration as he looked for a cab to flag down.

"I don't think—" Felicity's voice caught in her throat. "I don't think he's going home again, Digg."


	2. Broken Worlds

Far From Paradise

_Broken Worlds _

. . .

Note: Thanks for all the love on the first chapter, everyone! I'm so glad that you're enjoying this story, and while this second chapter had been a little delayed, hopefully it will be worth it, and I promise that the third chapter will be up much sooner. Also, you know how I gave this BS story about his story being four chapters? I don't have any idea what I was even thinking—ballparking what I'm looking at now, it's going to be a lot closer to seven.

. . .

Thea had been sure that she was broken, that her life had splintered so badly that it was utterly beyond disrepair. The only thing that she had going for her, she concluded, was that when something broke—well, that was it.

Broken is broken, it can't get any worse.

Again, she was wrong. As she watched another crime analyst, and reporter, and some idiot lawyer analyze her mother, discuss their family, talk about what a monster her mother was…she took the remote and flipped to another channel. She understood what her mother did, she understood that there were over a hundred people dead, numerous more that had been injured because of this insane plot that her parents and a few of their friends had to "cleanse" the Glades. But it was still her mother, it was still her mother, the same woman who held her when she cried and was the only parent that she had left.

Maybe the only person she had left, she thought with a stab of hopelessness.

It was her _mom_, and it was something that…as much as she wanted to…hate her—she couldn't.

And here she was, alone and abandoned again. She hated Oliver for leaving that day on the yacht with their dad. Thea had hated the both of them for going. They were always going places, and she was always left behind. Sometimes it was like her dad and Oliver had this special little club that she just wouldn't ever get to be a member of.

As she flipped the channel, finding someone on MSNBC talking about their failing industry, about how Oliver Queen had failed the masses who depended on him while the stocks plummeted—

_It's so easy with that silver spoon in his mouth, to forget that there are people out here who are truly suffering._

Thea threw the remote control, flinching slightly as it made contact with the TV and bounced off, while the brassy redhead continued to berate her brother's failures.

While she continued to talk about the spoilt golden boy, destroying the fortunes of everyone who'd made the mistake of having faith in him, she finally lost it.

_I mean, I've lost everything else…so why not this too?_ Thea thought. Mom, Tommy, Walter, Oliver…_Roy_.

Thea squeezed her eyes shut as she thought of her boyfriend. She'd been through the whole spectrum of human emotion over the last few days; through Oliver disappearing, Roy never returning, the sheer and utter agony of Tommy's funeral, and her mother's indictment.

Walter's phone call wasn't even the low of her week, so it hardly should have bothered her.

"_Thea, I'm so sorry." Walter said, "But you understand why I can't return."_

"_Yeah, I know. Of course." Thea nodded her head as she answered him. "It's fine. I mean, I'm fine."_

"_My lawyers have told me that if I return to the states, I would be compelled to testify against Moira." Walter said, pausing for a moment before going on, "You'll be fine with Oliver won't you? The two of you are doing fine, aren't you?" _

"_Oh yeah," Thea lied with a grim smile. _

_Right now, her brother's disappearance might be the best kept secret in the industry._

"_I know that he wanted me to return, but that would be the worst thing for your mother." Walter told her, "You know that if you need to get out of Starling City, if you want to leave all you have to do is come here. Your room is still waiting for you in the brownstone." _

_It would be like Oliver, at least like the old Oliver to do that. Anything to run away from his responsibilities and wallow in his misery. Well, you missed a step this time big brother._

"_I need to be here, Walter." Thea said, with a note of surety in her voice._

_She wasn't giving up on Oliver or Roy, not yet. Not until she had them back, or knew…knew for sure._

Thea walked around the couch, and reached up above the fireplace to yank the family crest and the weaponry attached to it. She pulled the ostentatious axe free of the crest, and lifted it over her head with a loud cry of anguish, before slamming it down against the screen; two, three, four times until it sputtered and sparked, finally silencing itself.

Filled with exhaustion after the outburst, Thea dropped down on the coffee table and started to cry again. She hated it, all she'd done was cry. The world was crashing down around them, and Thea Queen, entitled trust fund brat could only cry.

Security rushed in, filling the room, and she started to laugh.

"Just go!" She yelled, as they tried to pull her away, "Just get out of here, all of you."

She pressed her hand to her mouth as she felt a sob let trying to escape.

"There's no one left here to protect."

Before they could grab her, escorting her somewhere safer, probably in some sort of attempt to protect her from herself, she shoved past them all and stumbled into the hall.

Thea felt a shiver pass over her as the sunlight streamed in through the windows, filling it with all the warmth that seemed to be gone since she'd been alone.

She turned, rubbing the back of her hand over her eyes and found the tall figure lingering in the blinding sunlight. It felt like such a bright, almost hopeful parallel to the darkness she had felt since her life crumbled around her. Like the world owed it to her to just have one thing to get her through all of the bad. She'd lost everyone, after all; all in one fell swoop, and she was just supposed to be okay?

How are you supposed to move on from that kind of loss? How are you supposed to do it alone?

"Ollie?" Thea shielded her eyes against the glare with her hand, "Oh god, Ollie…?"

Thea hurried down the hallway, sniffling as she wiped the backs of hands across her eyes. She knew—she _knew_ that he wouldn't just abandon her again. She knew that Oliver would come back for her—he was her big brother after all, and that was what big brothers did.

"Thea."

"Oh god." Thea froze for a moment as he stepped out of the light, and she saw his chiseled face, and blue eyes. "God…Roy! You're alive!"

Barely unable to stop the sobs of relief that threatened to pour forth, Thea threw her arms around her boyfriend and hugged him tightly, burrowing her head against his shoulder.

"I was so scared." She cried, as his arms circled around her back and held her to his chest. "Roy, I was so scared that something had happened to you. Where have you been?"

"It doesn't matter." Roy said, squeezing her and pressing a needy kiss to her lips. "I promised I'd make it back to you…"

He smoothed her hair back as he held her, rocking her in his arms.

"I thought getting out of the Glades was hard…getting past that gate was almost impossible."

Roy smiled slightly, stepping back from Thea who clung to his hand.

"But your security is going have to step it up a notch if they want to keep me away from you."

Thea turned back around and saw the guards standing there, apparently waiting to see if this was a threat.

"You can go." Thea said, feeling as annoyed with them as she ever had. "You can g_o_."

It was with a sense of relief that they actually did disperse. It was the first time she'd ever really had any kind of sense of authority in the house.

"Roy, I thought I was never going to see you again." Thea swallowed over the lump in her throat, as she turned back to him.

"I know…about your mom." Roy said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry this is happening to you, Thea."

As she pulled him into the sitting room, the axe laying in front of the TV, a teacup overturned on the table with tea running over; Thea realized that Roy was looking around in confusion.

"What's wrong?" Thea asked, feigning total ignorance, and hoping he wouldn't ask about the axe.

That might be a hard one to explain.

"I half expected your brother to storm in here and throw me out." Roy said, glancing down at her. "He's not…I mean…"

Thea shook her head, willing herself not to cry. For a moment, she'd forgotten the ache and the fear, all of it numbed somehow by the relief of having Roy back.

"I don't know." Her voice was thick. "Tommy…Tommy never made it out. CNRI collapsed, and he was inside. I haven't seen Oliver since his funeral…at our mom's indictment, he lost it….pushed some paparazzo outside of the courthouse, and just took off."

Thea shook her head, trying to shake of the tears that threatened to fall.

"It's not the first time, or anything. I've seen Ollie go off the map before, but never alone. He was always…he always had Tommy. They were always there to pull each other back from the edge." A shiver passed through her body as she thought of all the things her brother could be going through.

There was a dark side to him now, she knew it, and she worried what it would do to him when he was in this sort of pain.

As furious as she was that he would leave her, she would give it all up in a second just to have him back. Thea needed him to be okay.

"He's not the same guy." Thea said finally, "He was different when he came back, and I'm just….I'm worried that this was too much for him, that after everything that happened on the island that this broke him."

Roy nodded his head once.

"Then we find him." He said simply.

"What?" Thea looked his way in confusion. "Roy…"

"You want your brother back, you want to make sure that he is okay, right?" Roy asked her.

Thea nodded her head. Of course she did.

"Then I'm going to make it happen." Roy told her, "Whatever you need. We'll get him back, Thea."

Thea wasn't sure how it had happened so quickly, and with such surety, but with Roy beside her, she finally felt a sense of calming security. With Roy at her side, she felt like maybe everything might be okay.

Maybe they could make it out of this.

. . .

It was with two hours' worth of acerbic remarks toward the network in general, and her databases in particular that Felicity finally got her system at Verdant up and running again.

Wonders would never cease. And Digg had called it hopeless. She hoped he could see the parallel metaphor here-nothing was hopeless with enough persistence and due diligence...you just couldn't give up because it got hard.

"You know," Digg said, his forehead creased with a wrinkle as he watched her work. "It's such a relief to see that Oliver isn't the only one who completely disregards everything I say."

He paced around the room while Felicity worked on her computers. Digg was not on board with the plan—or at least what she seemed to think passed as a plan—as a matter of fact, he thought it was closer to utter ignorance.

Optimistic to a fault, he thought. That was Felicity in a nut shell. Someone needed to consider the reality of the situation. Oliver had left, and he didn't want to come back.

"The two of you really make a pair, you know that?"

"Right now," Felicity said, "None of us are really making an _anything_, and I couldn't access most of these programs from my laptop."

"So, _supposing_ you can manage to track down Oliver, what exactly is your plan?" Diggle asked, arms crossed her his chest and a skeptical look on his face, "Give him a slap on the wrist, and demand he suits up and gets over it? Stamp your feet a couple times and tell him he's disappointed you?"

"Okay, firstly," Felicity turned around to look at him, really wishing that she could get the air powered up too because right now the basement was feeling…well, like a basement. "The sarcasm isn't helpful, and no one made you come down here."

Sure they didn't Digg thought, internalizing another rejoinder she wouldn't like. He couldn't just let her wander around the city alone and helpless. She couldn't protect herself. Someone had to look after her.

He couldn't-wouldn't-share her irrational optimism. He'd seen it in Oliver, felt it coming. Maybe it was better this way.

It was like a clean break.

He'd seen the soldier who put no value on his life in battle before, and usually he didn't end up hurting only himself. Oliver didn't belong under the hood, and they couldn't force him back into being Oliver Queen, heir to a failing company.

"Also," Felicity said, snapping a little at him, "I don't know if you've noticed but I am a little overwhelmed right now, I don't know, okay? I don't know how I'm going to get him back here and under the hood again. All I know is that I'm going to find him, and then I don't know—take it from there."

She turned back to her computer and bit down on her bottom lip hard.

Felicity had never expected to be the last one standing, that pulling their little team back together was going to have to fall on her. It was Oliver who'd had the mission, who believed in saving the city; and she'd just been along for the ride.

He was the one who made her believe that one person could make a concrete difference, and change the world for the better.

That's all a great plan _in theory_, Digg told her, and softened his voice as she started to tap angrily against the keyboard. "

But I don't think that you know him as well as you think you do, Felicity. Right now, he's a different guy than you know."

"Right now," Felicity said, "It means that he needs help more than ever."

It's not so simple, Digg thought. The place that Oliver was in right now…he wasn't nursing a simple wound that could be fixed with a gentle touch, and faith that everything would somehow work out for the good.

_He had a good relationship with a lot of the businesses in the Glades, but Carly had a better one. She hadn't been crazy about helping him with—of all things—keep an eye out for Oliver Queen, but he asked her, and she conceded._

_Digg had suspected that after Oliver took off, it wouldn't be long before he retreated into the seedy underbelly of the city. If he knew Oliver half as well as he thought he did, he thought he was more comfortable there—it was a facet of the human condition that Oliver seemed to understand._

_If he was looking to punish himself, there was no better place to go. He could drink and fight himself half to death with no one any the wiser. He never told Felicity he was looking, and when he got the call that someone matched the description he'd given, he'd clipped his gun into his waist without a word; it was better she wasn't involved, shed gave wanted to come along, to help, and he couldn't guarantee her safety._

_Not when the city was at a boiling point like it was now._

_The pub, really a hole in the wall on the east side of the city was filled with a couple dozen patrons who blended into the dirty, flea bitten environment of torn up stools and bruised and beaten down tables._

_In a dark corner as he entered the bar, he watched as a bedraggled blonde woman exchanged money with a man, her hands trembling nervously as he slipped a small packet of pills into her hand. She closed her fist over it, and shoved it deep into her pocket before scurrying off. She bumped into him once, and he moved to the side to give her space. _

_She darted out the door without a word._

_It struck him then, hard. What had he expected, a thank you? A thank you for standing by, and doing absolutely nothing?_

_Oliver was in the corner by the bar, a hat pulled down low over his eyes, and a line of shot glasses-empty in front of him, a bottle adjacent to them and emptying by the minute._

_For a moment, Diggle realized he didn't have words for the situation. Everything here was wrong. The Oliver that he knew would never have sat in the dark, drinking his weight in whiskey as another person was falling prey to vertigo, while another became richer off of it._

_He felt a smoldering of resentment in the pit of his stomach as he watched Oliver take another shot. They didn't get to just run away from their problems, he couldn't stop because it had suddenly got hard, because he wasn't sure that he had all the right answers anymore._

_He was angry because he got to see what it felt like to save someone like that girl. Instead of watching her slip into the night._

_Oliver was the cornerstone though, without him there was no hope, no mission...no savior for the city. He was just a man with a gun._

_As Oliver leaned back, Diggle saw the tall, dark featured brunette sitting beside him, trying to coax some attention from him with her hand on his thigh, her lips against his ear._

_She said something in Russian...Ukrainian, maybe? Digg didn't understand what she said, moving nearer to hear him respond in like with something she didn't seem to appreciate. She jumped up from the stool, looking like she would stalk off before she turned back and slapped him across the face._

_When she left, he slipped into a seat that would eclipse Oliver's view of him for the moment and waited._

"_A beer." He told the bartender. "Whatever's on tap."_

_He turned his attention back to Oliver, and discovered that the eastern European beauty had returned with two men, one hulking and dark with a head that was clean shaven and a tattoo across his skull, the other smaller, but obviously compensating for it with bulges at his ankle and waist that looked like a .32 and a knife respectively._

_The smaller one snapped at Oliver in the sharp, guttural language, grabbing his shoulder and turning him around to face him. Tensely, Diggle watched as the angry exchange occurred; the other patrons in the bar, all on edge by the appearance of the pair, some even abandoning their drinks and trickling out of the bar, hoping to be unnoticed._

"_Don't be stupid Oliver." Diggle pled silently, closing his eyes for a moment, and just hoping that he could choose to not be an idiot in this moment._

_Oliver turned back around to the bar, taking another shot; and the slimmer one snapped at Oliver, taking the glass that was in front of him and threw it to the floor, uttering something in rapid Russian that caused Oliver to smile._

_He responded, and both men seemed taken aback for a moment. The smaller one yanked the knife from his pocket, and pressed it to Oliver's throat. The larger man grabbed Oliver around the neck and pulled him up, and Diggle's hand tightened on his gun._

_Do something Oliver._

_His fingernails dug into his palm as he watched Oliver, not relaxing until finally Oliver seemed to react. His arms snapped out, whipping the smaller one with the knife and away to the floor, using his foot to kick the knife away and loosening the other's grip on his collar as he flipped backwards landing on top of the bar with his feet crouched, kicking his would be assailant in the back._

_He staggered backwards from the bar, and Oliver grabbed an abandoned bottle, hitting him against the head with it, beer pooling around their feet on the floor. This one didn't collapse like his partner though, he sprang back at Oliver, landing a hard punch to his face. _

_Diggle jumped up, unsheathing his gun and cocking it. Oliver's attention was drawn to him for a second, before snapping back into the fight, jumping out of reach of another hit; leaping up and spryly kicking him in the chest._

_Both of them laid prone on the floor, and Oliver yanked his jacket free from bar, took the bottle of whiskey that stood next to the empty shot glasses and tossed a few bills on the counter._

"_I don't need your help, and I don't need you here." Oliver said his voice filled with vitriol. "I have it under control." _

"_Fight club with gangsters," Diggle said sardonically, with a nod of his head as he sheathed his weapon. "Under control like that?"_

"_Is it exhausting, Diggle?" Oliver cocked his head to the side, with a look of contempt on his face, "Thinking that you have all the answers here? Since you know so well,"_

_Diggle smiled grimly, he'd had a feeling it might come down to something like that. Everyone needed someone to blame, didn't they?_

_Oliver pushed his finger against Diggle's chest, "Don't let me hold you back. I mean, you're so smart, so moral, you always seem to know just what the occasion calls for, who it calls for, ever—" _

"_Oliver!" Diggle exclaimed, reaching for his own .45 as the first gangster scrambled up from the floor with the gun in his hand._

_Without blinking, Oliver reached past him, grabbing a dart from the bar and throwing it at the man. It pierced his neck, and he dropped to the floor, the gun a few feet away as he screamed in pain._

"_Don't worry," Oliver told him, "He's not dead."_

"_You're lucky that you aren't." Diggle told him, "Get a look at your face, why don't you? You need stitches."_

_He could see the rage that bubbled under the surface. Oliver was like a pressure cooker right now, and looked like he was waiting to explode._

"_I need you," Oliver said tersely, "To move out of my way." _

_Oliver snatched up the coat he'd dropped as he threw the dart. _

"_Diggle, you don't want me to move you." Oliver told him, his voice filled with embittered rage. "Get out of my way." _

"_You're my friend, Oliver." Diggle said as he struggled to stomach the frustration he felt with him. "I want to help you."_

"_No." Oliver let out a breath that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "But if you don't stay out of my way, you're going to be my enemy."_

_He walked around Diggle, who stood in stunned shock for a second before turning and grabbing Oliver's arm to stop him. Oliver turning on his heel, grabbing his hand tightly, and twisting it behind him before throwing him against the bar._

"_I don't owe you, or anyone, anything." Oliver said in a harsh whisper, pressing him against the bar with more force than he'd have figured Oliver would have after drinking himself into a bender for three days, never mind the injuries he was still recovering from after his fight with Merlyn._

_Oliver let him go, slipping out of the door and into the night as easily as the girl before him had. Diggle realized as he watched Oliver slip into the black of the night that whoever Oliver had been before The Undertaking had been lost then._

No, Diggle shook his head, in the time since that night he had realized it was a confluence of events that had built up until finally imploding. The way he saw it, Oliver was like a rubber band that had been stretched too tightly. He'd been carrying on well enough, stretched thin and just holding it together enough to seem like he had it together—but this was too much, and he'd snapped.

He didn't know what exactly had happened to Oliver on the island, but he'd always been able to see it in him. As easily as he could magnetize the masses with charm, and put on a game face—Oliver had been holding it together for the job.

Neither of them, Digg thought, ever considered that it would be the job that would break him.

"If you aren't going to be on board with this a hundred and ten percent," Felicity said, "You shouldn't be here, Digg."

"It's dangerous." He stressed to her, ignoring the subject of Oliver since she wasn't going to bother listening to reason.

Felicity tugged her purse open, and pulled out a taser.

"And I'm prepared."

She glanced him over, and shook her head.

"I get that you think that this is probably crazy." She told him, "But…"

Felicity bit down on her lip, and turned back to her computers.

"I'm not ready to fold yet."

"Is anything going to change your mind?" Digg asked her, a note of desperation in his voice.

They couldn't save Oliver, and continuing to go after him was a losing battle.

"No." Felicity told him, still working on getting the databases to run.

Digg sighed exhaustedly, pulling free a small handgun from his waistband and setting it in front of her.

"I came here hoping to talk you out of this insane plan, Felicity." Diggle walked around the desk, and looked across the screen at her. "The city is in shambles, Carly needs me—and I can't chase down a ghost."

Felicity smiled slightly, and handed the gun back to him.

"Go take care of your family Digg." She told him with a nod. "They need you."

"I'd feel better if you held onto it." he told her.

"But I wouldn't." Felicity told him, "I don't do guns."

He left the gun, despite her request to leave with it, stopping and resting a hand on her shoulder.

"When it gets too big, if you're in any trouble at all," Digg told her, "Call me."

"Sure." Felicity smiled, "I'll be fine."

She listened to him close the door to the basement as he left, and sighed as she looked at the screens.

I'm not letting you slip away so easy, Oliver.

. . .


	3. We Defy Destiny

Far From Paradise

_We Defy Destiny _

. . .

Note: Thanks again to everyone who has been reading and reviewing! I'm amazed that I actually got this one finished a day earlier than I actually expected (insert fist pump here) and I'm hoping to get Chapter 4 up by Saturday, Sunday at the latest (so I'll be crossing my fingers for that).

. . .

"Well, that's a bust." Roy said with a groan, as the elevator dinged for them to get off before the penthouse. "How are we supposed to get up there—"

Triumphantly, Thea held up a key and smiled, feeling good about something for the first time in weeks.

"Without a key…" Roy finished lamely. "You have a key to the guy's apartment?"

He raised an eyebrow at his girlfriend, then shook his head. Why did he even bother sometimes?

"What am I even saying, of course you'd have a key to his apartment."

As small part of him considered that their might have been something, sometime between Thea and him…not that it mattered now. Roy felt a twinge of guilt at the thought. Tommy had been good to him, better than a lot of other people had.

"No." Thea shook her head, feeling a twinge of remorse and sadness wash over her as she thought of Tommy again.

Sometimes it felt unbelievable that he could actually be gone. Then again, pretty much everything was hard to believe sometimes—if she stepped back and looked at the whole situation, it felt like she'd landed through a rabbit hole. She still didn't understand how they could both be gone—in any other world, if she was missing her brother, Tommy would be first person she went to.

She bit down on her lip to keep from crying, Thea had realized that as long as she didn't think about anyone for too long, it was easier to stay strong. As long as she kept moving, and doing; as long as she had something to do other than listen to people talk about the way her brother was destroying the company, and how her mother should fry for her part in the genocide of hundreds….just as long as she didn't think about these things, or the friend that she lost, then she could make it through.

"Sorry." Roy said softly, as the hurt look spread across her face. "You guys were pretty close, huh?"

Thea shrugged, pulling the key free from the panel as the elevator opened into the penthouse. In a rush, she was hit with a sense of loss that she hadn't exactly expected.

She'd forgotten how many memories she had in this place.

Roy took her hand, and pulled her into the penthouse. The elevator doors closed behind them, and Thea looked around the place with a sigh. Six years, and nothing had really changed, it looked exactly the same. Tommy had always been comfortable like that, even as he matured and grew up into this man she admired more than she was always willing to admit—at his very foundation, everything was the same.

"I guess it's a good thing that he's not a change the locks kind of guy." Roy remarked.

No, Thea thought. He wasn't.

She'd told him more than a few times that with the number of women who had come through (not that she was jealous) that he should consider it, but he just laughed and ruffled her hair.

_But if I did that_, Tommy said with a playful wink, _they could never come back._

Sometimes, the ache that she felt over everyone she missed was unbearable. Roy's hand squeezed hers, and she was drawn back to reality again. He was her rock, she really didn't know how she would be getting through this without him.

No Oliver, though. She should have known better than to think that he would be camped out in Tommy's apartment. He had a little more finesse than that.

"You know," She turned, and lingered in the hall, glancing at the pictures in the hall; flicking the light on. "Tommy was always…just around. It was sort of like having a second brother, just always around with Oliver."

She smiled, as she came across a picture of him and her brother with what looked like a whole ballet. Tommy and Oliver both looked so happy.

Stop thinking about it, she told herself, it'll just make it worse.

Thea set the picture back as it was.

"He was my first crush, which was…completely crazy and unreasonable, I know—and completely one sided, just for the record. Never mind the most ridiculous cliché known to man."

Thea sighed, her life was easier when it was a cliché.

Roy nodded his head, "He was a great guy. Not many people would have given someone like me a chance, never mind a second chance."

"_Thea said that you would be here." Roy said, shoving his hands into his pockets as he walked into the club and found Tommy at the bar, pouring over the club's books._

_He looked up at from the ledger, and nodded his head._

"_Thea was right." He said, turning back to his work._

"_I'm sorry." Roy blurted out awkwardly, "Look, I know that you took a big chance in hiring me—most people wouldn't do it. And I blew it."_

_Tommy snapped the accounts book closed, and looked Roy over._

"_You did blow it." Tommy said, "I gave you an opportunity, a chance that most people wouldn't ever get to have and you threw it away."_

_Roy shook his head, "I knew this was stupid…"_

_He bit down on his mouth, frustrated that he ever did this. As much as he wanted to show Thea that he could change, that he could be this guy who was somehow worthy of having been saved by The Hood—that he could be the better guy that she insisted she saw in him…he didn't know how to do it._

_He didn't know how to be the guy who was worthy of her._

_Roy turned his back, and started to leave._

"_Stop." Tommy said, gesturing for him to come back to the bar. "You know, my father thinks that forgiveness, that apologies are weaknesses—that they come from men who don't have enough conviction in their actions." _

_Roy nodded his head once, confused. He wasn't entirely sure where Tommy was going with this._

"_I'm not my father." Tommy told him, "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, and threw away a lot of chances, blew a lot of opportunities." _

_Tommy pulled out a bag from behind the bar and set it on top._

"_This is your uniform." _

"_Thanks…" Roy stood there, stunned for a moment. "You—I mean, you're actually going to let me come back…have the job?" _

"_Let's just look at it as a fresh slate." Tommy told him, pushing the bag across the bar. "You start Friday."_

"_Thank you. I won't let you down." Roy said after a pause, taking the bag from the counter. "I'm not that guy anymore—the one who screws up. I want to do better than that—be a better guy." _

"_Smart move." Tommy told him, "Because, and I mean this in the most threatening way possible—if you hurt that girl, I will come for you." _

_Roy stifled a laugh, "So you're going to give me the protective big brother speech?"_

"_Oh, no—I wouldn't impinge on Oliver's place there. He's the disapproving older brother." Tommy told him, "I'm telling you that if you do anything to hurt that girl, you'll answer to me."_

"_Yes…sir." Roy said, "I've got it." _

"_Put that away too," Tommy told him. "Just Tommy." _

"_Yeah, well…" Roy held the bag up in a gesture of thanks, "Thanks then, Tommy."_

"He and Ollie got a bad rap…" Thea said, as they walked through the hall; picking up a picture of the three of them on her dad's yacht, and slipping it into her purse. "They aren't bad people—you have to know…it was never easy for either one of them."

She turned on her heel, and looked up at Roy, who was taking in the immensity of the apartment. Thea realized it probably seemed incredible excessive to him, it was probably twice the size of his house, easy.

Or what his house had been, Thea corrected herself with a wave of guilt. She'd seen the crumbled mess that it was now.

"I'm getting that." Roy said.

He started to remark that it couldn't be easy for anyone to grow up with a parent that could be so far off the mark that they could do this…when he choked it down just in time. The last thing that he wanted to do was hurt Thea, he could see the pain that she was feeling in her eyes—worse, he heard it when she cried at night, long after she thought he was asleep.

Roy didn't know exactly how he was going to fix things for her, but he figured that the first step was to go with it—if finding her brother would give her even a modicum of relief, than that's what they would do. As much as he thought that Oliver was basically a self-centered jerk for abandoning her when she needed him the most.

"I took it really hard when my dad and Ollie were lost. When they stopped searching for them, my mom was so broken up, she just went to bed and it was like she decided she wasn't ever going to get back up. I felt forgotten, and I was angry. She wasn't the only one who lost them."

Thea shook her head,

"Tommy was there when I needed someone. I could talk to him, he'd let me talk to him for hours about Oliver and my dad, and he just…" Thea's eyebrows crinkled together as she thought of him. "He always understood. He made me feel like I wasn't alone. I could count on him when there was no one else, it was like still having a piece of Oliver when he wasn't there."

"Thea, hey…" Roy wrapped his arms around her shoulders and hugged her to his chest. "You're not alone now. I'm not going anywhere. And we're going to find your brother."

"You _hate_ my brother." Thea said, with a little twinge of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

"Well, I think the feeling is a little mutual. And…he started it." Roy said with a little shrug, and a grin.

Thea laughed, "Okay, okay…" she sighed, "C'mon, there might be something here."

"Voicemail." Roy pointed to the phone stand on an end table, with a red light blinking.

"Four messages." Thea said, pressing play.

_Tommy, I'm calling back to confirm breakfast…_

As Malcom Merlyn's voice came through the speaker, Thea felt a little twitch of rage.

"When we find The Hood," Thea said, angrily punching the button to get to the next message. "First step is to have him put some arrows in Malcolm. A lot of them."

Roy nodded his head, "You're not getting any argument from me."

And he thought he had father issues. Whatever conspired between the Merlyns took it to a whole other level.

_Tommy, you're not taking my calls…_

"Laurel." Thea said, skipping forward. "And you know what, I know the feeling because I've been calling her for a week, and she hasn't answered once."

"Well, you said that she and Oliver had been arguing. Maybe she just wants to get away from it." Roy suggested. "If she knew where he was, I'm sure she'd tell you."

_I know you aren't in any place to listen right now, but Tommy, just stay away from the Glades. No matter how mad you are with me right now, you know that I wouldn't lie about this. It's happening tonight, and I don't want anything to happen to you…please—just stay away…_

"Ollie…" Thea said, squeezing her eyes shut. "Oh god…I'm so worried about him. You didn't see him at the funeral, Roy. He was such a mess."

"Look, this isn't the end of the line, okay?" Roy took her firmly by the shoulders. "I told you that we'll find him, and we will. All we're doing now, is narrowing down where he isn't."

It might not be one hundred percent true, Roy thought, but if it would make her feel better, he'd run with it. After all, they said things like that on those missing people shows, didn't they? Besides, it wasn't a huge city—a billionaire playboy couldn't stay hidden away forever.'

Roy pulled her down the hall, and into Tommy's living room. Sunlight poured in the room through gigantic glass windows. The iron and glass décor gleamed, and he sat her down on the huge leather couch that was opposite a long glass coffee table. Roy moved some magazines and mail to the side, and looked back to her.

"What about his other friends?" Roy asked, "Old girlfriends, guys from school…anyone, Thea?"

"Friends?" Thea almost laughed out loud, "Even before the island, Oliver didn't have a lot of friends. I mean, everyone likes him, but…"

She shook her head, "It was him, and Tommy, and Laurel. That's it."

Roy furrowed his eyebrows together.

"There's got to be someone else." He said, "Hey, the black guy. What about him?"

"That's Diggle, his bodyguard." Thea frowned, "If Oliver wanted to go off the map, that's the first person he'd shake."

"Let's not count anything out." Roy said, "Do you know where he lives?"

"I don't really know him that well." Thea said, "He was just with Oliver…like all the time."

Thea sighed, trying to think hard. They hung out sometimes, at Verdant together…but no one would be there. It was a mess. She'd gone by after the funeral to try and find Oliver…even the liquor bottles were there, so she didn't think he'd even been around.

"Oh my god!" Thea exclaimed, "He's got a girlfriend, I remember seeing him and Oliver with her at Verdant. She runs some burger place in the Glades."

"Here's hoping it's still in one piece." Roy said.

Thea pulled her phone free from her purse, and did a search for burger restaurants in and around the Glades.

"A lot of fast food places…." Thea flipped through the list, until she found a place that wasn't a chain restaurant and in the Glades. "Here…Belly Buster Burgers?"

"They're still standing." Roy said.

Finally, he thought. They had earned something good—at the very least, it was a lead in the right direction.

Thea's nose crinkled, "You eat there?"

She slipped her phone back into her purse.

"They're…" Roy groaned, and shook his head. Now wasn't the time to remind Thea that she'd also eaten there on multiple occasions, and swore that their fries were like crack. "We'll do that some other time, little Miss Gourmet."

Thea didn't hear the remark, as she looked past Roy on the coffee table and saw Tommy's tablet_. I am so sorry, _she thought_, but I know you wouldn't be angry with me._

She slipped it into her bag, hoping that it might have something remotely helpful on it.

. . .

Thea had been trying to put this off, but the calls from the Metro Police had made it startlingly clear that this was not a problem that she could push under the rug. Oliver hadn't shown up to testify, and from the way they were talking about it; well, the DA's office didn't sound very happy about it.

On the other hand, she figured that her mom's lawyers were over the moon. As glad as she was that it was good for her mom…she didn't like thinking that the same was probably true for Malcom Merlyn.

She had bigger problems though. Somehow, she needed to cover up Oliver's disappearance—under strict orders from the board of directors—and try and persuade some cop not to arrest her brother for being in contempt of court.

Then again, good luck with that. Thea didn't think they'd have any better luck tracking down Oliver than she was.

"You know," Thea said, breaching the subject slowly to Roy as she slipped into her jacket. "Maybe it would be for the best if I take care of this on my own and you…"

Thea shrugged, "Get a little more sleep, actually. You look exhausted. Maybe play around with the tablet."

She took Roy's face between her hands, and looked at him. He still looked a little beaten up, and though he didn't really tell her much about the three days between The Undertaking and when he came back to her…she knew that something had happened.

"Nice try." Roy told her, pulling her close to him for a kiss. "I'm not letting you out of my sight. Besides, I'm definitely no hacker—you might have better luck with that. You've seen me struggle to access my voicemail."

Thea laughed.

"Even if it involves what is bound to be an incredibly unpleasant meeting with the cop who—I'm pretty sure—hates you just marginally less than he hates my brother?" Thea raised an eyebrow at him.

Roy rolled his eyes, "I'm not worried about the detective. I don't get what he thinks you can do though—and really, are there any other cops in the Metro division aside from Lance?"

"I don't know." Thea shrugged, "Oliver was supposed to testify at the trial, and since he was a no show, he's probably hoping that I can tell him where he can go and arrest him at."

She sighed, "I'm sure that would make his week."

"You never told me what his problem with your brother was." Roy said.

"Because that could fill a book." Thea informed him. "Honestly, if he found Oliver at least I'd feel a little relieved. In a jail cell…well, at least he's not getting hurt. Much."

Thea tossed him the keys to the SUV.

"Security has the cars on lock down, so I stole these from our driver. Just a little trick I learned from my brother."

Roy laughed, wrapping his arm around her shoulder as they headed down to the garage.

"You know, for a spoiled little rich girl—you're sort of a decent criminal."

"Tell me about it." Thea said with a laugh.

. . .

Felicity had been in interrogation for forty minutes when Detective Lance walked in.

"You know, when I woke up this morning I wasn't really picturing spending a day in the police station." She told him, "I thought that maybe we were past that, given the givens…"

"The cameras are off." Lance told her, sitting down at the table across from her. "I'm not here to arrest you for…for what you do. Whatever it is you do."

Lance seemed to be struggling with actually saying it, and Felicity decided that it was probably for the best to let him go with it.

"What do you want me here for then?" Felicity asked him, leaning against the table, and watching him.

She wouldn't put it past him to try and get her to blow in The Hood, or even Oliver. This double identity thing could be exhausting, and it wasn't even her identity.

"Our um…mutual friend…" Lance cleared his throat, nervously handling the files that he'd carried into the room with him. "I didn't—I mean, I don't know how to get in touch with him. I was hoping that you could relay a message to him."

Felicity nodded her head, "I can…try."

_If by try, I mean that I can pretend that I have the vaguest idea until my database hopefully uplinks to the lo-jack that may or may not ever work._

"Try? What do you mean?" Lance asked, "Isn't this guy your boss?"

For a moment, she felt a little flicker of trepidation in her demeanor. This was not going well.

"It's not really a boss/employee type of relationship." Felicity said, reminding herself to stay cool, take her responses calmly and with certainty.

If she couldn't keep his secret concealed, there would be nothing to come back to.

"Then what kind of relationship is it?" He asked with a sort of grimly uncomfortable look.

"Not that kind either." Felicity said with a roll of her eyes, then smiled. "It's a partnership."

She'd earned the promotion.

"Uh huh." Lance nodded his head once. "And your partner…?"

"We all took some hits after The Undertaking." Felicity said with a vagueness to her words that the detective didn't seem happy with.

_C'mon_, she told herself. _You can do this. You practiced it a hundred times. You're prepared, you knew this was coming. You have the story, you have the upper hand. He is coming to you for help. That's a good thing._

"No one got out unscathed," Felicity said, realizing it might be the truest thing she told him. "He's not some kind of superhuman."

. . .

Thea shrugged as Detective Lucas and Assistant District Attorney Sam Crawford asked for the hundredth time, barely even bothering to try and ask differently any more, where her brother was, and why he didn't show up to court.

"She didn't know the first ten times you asked." Roy said, "You think anything's changed in the last thirty minutes when we've been sitting here."

"You, I don't like you." Detective Lucas said, pointing his finger at Roy. "You might want to try and stay out of trouble for five minutes."

"Look," Thea said, spreading her arms out on the table, trying to get back on track before she had a missing brother and a boyfriend in a jail cell. "I don't know if you guys got the memo, but my brother just got back from five years of being stranded on a desert island, tortured, watched our dad and his friend die…"

She looked them over, "Maybe you could say it's been a rough year for him between that, and now this. His best friend—_best friend_—just died, and our mom is going to prison until about…the end of time. It's a stressful time for him."

"Yeah, yeah…" DA Crawford said with a heavy sigh, pinching his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "You know, I'm really sorry to inconvenience your little life; with the shopping and clubbing, _Miss_. _Queen_, but I'm actually trying to bring to justice the people who masterminded a plot to create a genocide."

"And you think I'm not on board with that?" Thea shot back, "I lost people I loved too!"

Detective Lucas snorted, and tried to cover it up.

"That's novel, really." Crawford said, "But—"

"You think that's funny?" Thea said, angrily turning to Detective Lucas.

As he shook his head, rolling his eyes, Thea jumped up from her chair, ready to show him how serious she was when Roy grabbed her.

"Trust me, not a good idea." He turned to the cop with narrowed eyes once Thea was back in her seat.

"No one," Thea said, furious now with them, "Wants to see justice more than I do."

"Then why don't you start helping us." Crawford told her. "Your brother is valuable to us. He admitted in depositions to seeing heinous acts go on under the knowing eyes of Merlyn and your mother. For true justice to happen, we need him on the stand."

"Then you better hope he pulls his head out of the liquor bottle long enough to stand up." Thea told them, realizing it probably wasn't far from the truth. "The last time I saw my brother—"

"Last night." Roy supplied. "He caught me in Thea's room, and was threatening to throw me out, but she persuaded him to let me stay—since my house doesn't really exist anymore."

"Well, maybe next time you see him you can let him know that our case needs him." Crawford said, slamming his notebook shut angrily.

. . .

"Yeah, yeah…" Lance scratched his head, seemingly exhausted with her vague answers, and sighed, "Here's the thing…"

He slid a few files across the table to her.

"We're understaffed, and we're overwhelmed right now. The city is falling apart at the seams, and we're doing everything that we can do—but we need help. Our missing persons cases have skyrocketed, murders are on the rise, and don't even talk to me about the drug overdoses. The city is literally falling apart."

"I've noticed." Felicity said; she lived in one of the nicer high rises in Starling City and it was noticeable even there.

She glanced down at the files, skimming them. "But what's so special about these three?

"Glad you asked." Lance said, "These three…"

He tapped his fingers on the files.

"I don't like it. There's something not right there, but I don't have the resources to take it on. I believe that if something doesn't happen though, people are going to keep disappearing. What's happening out there…I think he's the person to stop it. Right now, I think he's the only person."

_The Hood could_, Felicity thought, _if The Hood was willing to do anything._

She bit down on her lip, flipping through the files.

There weren't any noticeable connection between the people. Two men, one woman. They were all different ages, from different socio-economic backgrounds…

"I don't get it," Felicity said, "It looks like the only thing they have in common is that they're dead."

"Which is exactly why I can't look into it. My captain wants to write it off as three more lost to the earthquake." Lance told her, "But I don't think it's that easy."

"They weren't even found in that part of the city." Felicity said in confusion, as she perused the files. "This one on the Upper West, here at the border of the Glades and the city…this one in a lake towards the north…"

She shook her head, not liking this any better than he did. It didn't even make sense.

"Who would find a victim like this, and move their body?" Felicity asked.

"Uh huh." Lance nodded his head, relieved that she seemed to see the problem herself. "You can keep those."

"I'll see what I can do." Felicity said, gathering up the files.

At the very least, she could run them through her databases. Detective Lance didn't have access to the same…questionable methods that she did.

"You know," Lance said, pushing open the door and looking her over. "He's not the only one missing, Ms. Smoak."

"I know." She said, "I hear the numbers are in the hundreds."

"That's not what I meant." Lance told her, "I hear Oliver Queen was a no show at court. He's supposed to testify against his mother and Malcom Merlyn."

Felicity shrugged, trying to take a slow, calming breath.

"Wow, I had no idea." She frowned, "You know, I guess if I had to testify against my mother I might take a sabbatical too."

Felicity slipped past him into the hallway,

"But you know, I'm not all that worried. I'm sure he'll show up in some strip club somewhere in a couple days and remember that he forgot."

Lance nodded his head, making a grunt of agreement.

Felicity felt a pang of guilt as she turned around, shoving the files into her purse as she walked along—nearly fumbling them as she walked into someone.

"I'm sorry." Felicity said, quickly shoving them away before looking up. "I—"

_Oh boy_. She froze as she realized that it was Thea Queen.

"My fault." Thea said, glancing at her boyfriend and nodding her head. "I wasn't watching where I was going."

Felicity took a calming breath after Oliver's sister walked past, her hand entwined with her boyfriend's, just thankful she hadn't recognized her.

"Thea Queen," Lance said, glancing at her. "I take it you haven't met?"

"Lowly IT techs aren't exactly invited to the family Christmas party." Felicity told him, "But uh…I'll get on this, and when I know anything you'll hear from me."

"What about him?" Lance asked.

"You'll hear from me." Felicity stressed. "Good afternoon, Detective."

Oh wow. Felicity felt a shiver as she stalked off, after pulling out the icy retort. She'd done it.

. . .

The club was not the sort of place that Oliver Queen would ever be seen in. _As a matter of fact_, Oliver thought, feeling the small twinge with each ball that he sunk with a thump into the corner pocket, _no._

Oliver shook away these thoughts as he had for a week now. Not his place. Not his problem. Not his responsibility.

Irina , the pretty eastern European beauty cuddled up next to him pouring him another fifth of whiskey.

Oliver Queen didn't have any responsibilities anymore.

"It's good for your game." She said in Russian, wrapping her arm around his waist and holding the glass to his lips.

She brushed her lips against his jaw, and ran her hand over his chest.

"And what about you?" he asked her, ignoring the impatient sounds that Maksim was making as he waited for Oliver to take his turn.

Oliver supposed he'd be upset as well if he was on the losing end of a thousand dollar bet…but then again, probably not. He'd lost far more than that this week, and he would continue to lose more. It was just that right now, the idea of beating the excessively arrogant, low level racketeer amused him.

"I'm good for everything." Irina assured him in a low purr, slipping one of her legs between his. "After you win…I will demonstrate."

Easily, Oliver called the ball, sinking it in the right corner pocket—Maksim punched his fist down against the _table_, letting loose a stream of obscenities. Abruptly though, he stopped, looking nervous as he looked somewhere past Oliver.

Oliver knew that it was the same Russian—or one of them at least, Alexi should still be convalescing in a hospital somewhere—Vitaly Zhliniv, the low ranking pit boss for the Bratva's gambling ring in Starling City. A bit player, at best.

At worst, a Russian with a bad temper and a predilection for afflicting pain on anyone who owed him money, and/or had the bad luck of crossing him. Oliver supposed that kicking his ass, and nearly severing his number one's carotid artery counted as thus.

This was good, he'd needed something to burn off the rage that had been building.

"Vitaly, back so soon," Oliver turned from the pool table, a chuckle escaping as he watched Vitaly coming up on him with a friend he didn't recognize. "And you've brought a friend..."

He tapped the side of his neck with the pool stick. "Is Alexi still feeling a little under the weather?"

Oliver took a long swig from the bottle of whiskey.

"Because, you know—I'm feeling great."

The new one, of medium build, and thick cord-like muscles that trembled in his neck, balked at his joke, and was held back by Vitaly who wore a grim look.

"You have to forgive Yuri's rush," Vitaly said, "after all that was his wife in the bar. You've insulted him, and the marriage bed. He's a traditional man. Catholic."

"I'd be offended too if my wife was a whore."

A smirk crossed Oliver's face as Vitaly held Yuri back still. These low ranking mobsters...if they knew he was a Captian...well, then there would be no fun to have. All this foreplay though, this was boring him.

"Ah," Oliver nodded his head, twisting the pool stick around in his hands like a baton. "Your wife you say?"

Yuri was trembling with anger, and Vitaly tipped his head curtly.

"His _wife_. You see the trouble you've caused now…the mother of his children, and you insult her, treating her like a common street walker."

"I'm sorry, really...I'm so sorry." Oliver played with the pole in his hands, shaking his head, and waiting for them to take the first strike. "There have been so many, and my memory, I mean, I forget—was your wife the one who takes it for free, or the fat one?

Oliver raised an eyebrow, and grinned as Yuri came at him. Dove at him, really. This could hardly be a fair fight.

He bowed out of reach easily, and Yuri stumbled, landing against the pool table.

There was no _finesse_ to Yuri.

"It's no wonder she gives it up for free if you make love the way you fight." Oliver ducked a punch, using the pole to repel him easily. "Slovenly, sporadic...no follow through...at all."

He ducked the hits as they came, repelling Yuri without much effort. Quickly, Oliver adjusted his defense as Yuri yanked two knives from his boots, after Oliver sent him sprawling onto the floor.

"If I was a Freudian sort of guy," Oliver said, darting between slices of the knife in the air—roughly, jabbing the stick onto his chest, and hearing the snap of a bone that caused Yuri to howl in pain. "I'd say that you're overcompensating, Yuri."

Yuri retorted with a string of angry obscenities. He whipped the knives with a studied certainty; one of which Oliver repelled easily with the stick, the other he caught in his free hand, with a flash of pain when his fist closed over the blade hard, slicing deep into the flesh.

He'd slipped slightly. The knife clattered to the floor as his hand fell open, and he made a tight fist trying to stop the bleeding. With his other hand, he gripped the stick tightly.

"Mr. Orlav is concerned about the damage we do to this fine establishment." Vitaly chuckled, "We should continue this conversation outside like gentlemen, Mr. Hawke."

The girl who had been flirting with him-Irina —brushed her body up against his with a sweet smile as she yanked the stick from his hand.

"I do hope you've enjoyed your drink Mr. Hawke." She smiled, smoothly taking the bottle of whiskey from the table as he wavered slightly.

It wasn't every day that the upper hand was yanked from him.

It hit his bloodstream, and he realized it wasn't the liquor that caused him to fumble. She had slipped him something, and while he tried to fight against the fog that clouded his mind; his vision still was fuzzy, and he felt lethargic.

"We'll carry this on outside." Irina told him, turning to Yuri. "You've had your moment. He is now our concern."

She jerked her head in Vitaly's direction, and he grabbed Oliver, yanking him toward the door.

"Don't bother fighting…" Vitaly chuckled, "Yet."

Vitaly pulled him along, Irina kicking the door open and glancing into the street before nodding her head for Vitaly to continue on. With his arms twisted precariously behind his back, Oliver struggled, realizing that he might have underestimated the pit boss.

. . .

Felicity had always though that it would be a long shot.

Tagging Oliver's motorcycle with a hidden piece of tech to lo-jack him seemed like an important pre-emptive strike after Malcolm Merlyn had grabbed him. She'd been unable to think about anything else, except how much more badly that could have gone; how incredibly lucky Oliver had been.

In reality, slipping the device on the bike had been a lot more like peace of mind for her. She could not sit in a basement for a second longer, listening to him jump across buildings, and whiz down packed highways with this awful feeling in the pit of her stomach. For the love of god, she knew the statistics. Not that the fact that motorcyclists were that much more prone to injury was even the biggest problem…but at least she could pretend that it put her mind a little bit at ease.

Felicity had also decided that after she did it, it was probably a secret best kept between her and her computer. She didn't doubt that Oliver would be anything less than incredibly annoyed with her if he found out that she'd decided to track him.

Watching the steady blip on her phone, Felicity had plenty of time to consider all of this, never mind the most important consideration of all. She was so far outside of her comfort zone as she waited outside the Golden Dolls club, a small part of herself hoping that the name was a misnomer and it was more than just a very dirty looking strip club.

He was so particular about what he put in his body—

"Oh no." Felicity shook the thought away, turning her focus back to scouting out the club.

There had been a resounding sense of relief when she'd finally been able to get this program running. There was, of course, a chance that he had merely stashed his motorcycle outside of the club; or somehow unearthed the device—but she was confident that she'd hidden it well enough that without, well…her, he hadn't a chance of knowing the difference.

Felicity had always suspected that her neuroticism would one day serve her well.

_As would_, Felicity hoped, _this_.

She yanked the zipper on the oversize leather bag that lay in the passenger seat down. Felicity had two-fold expectations for his fancy, billionaire vigilante toys. If all went well, she would firstly figure out a way to deal with Oliver and his plan to run away and blame himself because the psychosis of Malcolm Merlyn had succeeded. The other half of her plan, sort of a plan 1.5, was to desperately leave some sort of evidence to at least make it appear like The Hood was alive and trying to protect the city.

Evidence like a nice green arrow in some dark alley.

Given, she wasn't so sure how well she'd thought out this plan, but she also hadn't thought that she'd be able to track down Oliver with marginal success. All was good so far.

For a few hours now, she had been loitering, watching the blinking dot with obsessive detail; sitting in the nondescript black Honda Accord that she had borrowed from her neighbor.

_Borrowed_…

Felicity bit down on her lip nervously, having to use the term incredibly loosely.

Somehow, when Emily had left her with the keys to her apartment while she was overseas for a month for work, well…she didn't suppose 'stealing' her car and using it to do something of this ilk had really been a part of the arrangement at all. However, her bright blue Yaris would be bound to stick out noticeably; not only to Oliver, but to anyone. Emily's car was a little more subtle, and blended into the street easier. She'd never imagined that she'd have to go as far as stealing a car though. So, that was new to her.

Please, Felicity said, consoling herself with a simple thought, it's hardly grand theft auto. It's a loan, and it will be back on level four, spot 17 C, before _anyone_—least of all Emily was any the wiser.

God knew, if she was really going to sit back and take stock of her life, and the things that she'd done in the time since she'd met Oliver, it wasn't even really like this scratched at the surface of the illegal things she'd done.

Felicity sighed, leaning back in the car and looking out the window at the front door of the club and continuing to watch the comings and goings, trying to hold onto her faith that he would be here. She was more than willing to spend the night.

All she knew was that she couldn't give up on him. It wasn't going to be easy, and it wasn't going to be pleasant, but she knew that if she could get to him—she could reason with him, make him see sense. If she could just get him to listen to her, maybe she could save him.

Felicity was wrenched brutally from these thoughts, her elbows slipping from the wheel, when she watched as a tall and slender brunette opened the door and was followed quickly by a hulking, bald guy dragged Oliver out the door with him, his arms pinned behind his back.

"Oh…that can't possibly be good." Felicity swallowed nervously, realizing that maybe she had overestimated her ability to handle this on her own, probably.

_Too late to turn back now_, she thought, watching as they dragged him into the alley next to the club. Felicity yanked the black bag free, and slid out of the car once the three slipped into the backstreet.

She ran across the street, the back slung across her shoulders. Felicity felt her heart thumping against her chest anxiously, and stomached the growing sense of nausea as she followed them.

Two options, she realized, glancing down the alleyway and considering running in head on and hoping they were so distracted by Oliver that they wouldn't see her coming—but something in the way Oliver looked, told her he wasn't exactly at his peak fighting condition—or slipping along the fence, and trying to get the upper hand sight unseen.

She ran along the fence, pushing herself as she listened, and stopping when she reached a large blue dumpster pushed up against the fence.

"And we could have had such an erotically good time," Irina tut-tutted as she grabbed Oliver's face between her thumb and forefinger while Vitaly held his arms down, shaking her head sadly. "Such a face. _Such_ a face…it is going to break my heart to ruin it."

She turned to Vitaly, "It will break my heart, won't it?"

Vitaly grunted something similar to a confirmation.

Oliver struggled against the grip, trying to figure out some way out of this mess as Irina dug her nails into his face. If he made it out of this, he was really going to think twice before taking a drink from a pretty girl.

_Another part of him thought_, his head snapping backwards as Irina backhanded him with more force than a five-ten slip of a woman should have been capable off, _maybe this was going to be the easiest out of all. There weren't any decisions to make any longer. _

The island was calling to collect on his life after all. It would be what he deserved after all, he'd returned to fulfill this one mission and he'd failed.

Irina's hits came sharply, fiercely, each seeming to connect harder than the one before. So obviously it was not big mouthed—big everything—Vitaly who ran the show.

Felicity hadn't expected to have to actually hit anything. After scrambling on top of the dumpster, mildly impressed for a moment in her current success so far, she peered over the fence to see that Oliver wasn't doing so well.

As she tugged the crossbow free of the bag; swallowing down the fear, and trying to steady her hands, she struggled to remind herself that she had practiced this.

Of course, she'd been aiming at a punching bag and not moving human beings that were currently trying to kill the man whose life she was trying to dig out of the gutter, but these were all minor details, right?

Pull yourself together, she ordered. You've got one shot, one shot at getting this right.

_If that brown haired bimbo could use one of these things_, Felicity told herself, _you can master it_. _You have an IQ of a hundred and seventy!_

As she watched the woman who had seemed intent on merely beating Oliver to death flip open a knife, her heart skipped a beat. Felicity flipped the safety on the crossbow, her blood racing through her veins.

_Point and aim. Point and aim. Point and aim. He's shown you a dozen times, Felicity. You've watched him do these things a thousand and one times._

Stifling a cry, Felicity squeezed both hands on the trigger and shot. She was almost afraid to look until she heard the clearly feminine snarl of pain, followed by a lot of yelling in Russian. The big guy threw Oliver to the side as the woman collapsed to the ground, a fact that relieved Felicity as she quickly reloaded the crossbow and shot again.

She cringed as she missed this time, hitting a spot in the building ten feet away from him.

_Oh crap._

The woman laid on the ground, writhing enough to give Felicity the impression she hadn't killed her. Which was, you know, good.

As she reloaded, looking back up at them she saw that she'd been made. The man who'd thrown Oliver to the ground to check on his friend was looking up her way and pointing.

For a moment, Oliver had been stunned, the drugged lethargy and assault on his skull, making him too confused to totally sort out what had happened. He'd seen the bolt pierce Irina's arm and throw her to the ground, and Vitaly shoved him into the ground as he checked on her; both of them uttering something about The Hood.

No such luck, he thought, trying to pull himself together enough to reach for the knife Irina had dropped. He gathered it up in his hand, and hid it before falling back against the ground again. Whatever he'd been dosed with not only made moving a struggle, but all of his movements felt so incredible heavy and his sight was fuzzy….unfocused.

Attacking before they got close would not be in his favor.

He looked up in the direction Irina was yelling, sending Vitaly off to take care of the mark and gritted his teeth. No matter how he tried to shake the image, the long blonde ponytail and glasses didn't disappear.

Felicity?—what did she think she was doing, trying to get herself killed?

_Uh oh._

As the woman yelled at him, and he took off running down the alleyway, Felicity realized that she had about forty-five seconds to come up with something—some kind of genius back up plan. Feeling a slight spark of nerves as she looked over the fence and saw Oliver lying on the ground, eyes squinting up at her; she realized she was probably in over her head.

_Make that definitely_, she decided as she saw the guy running up the alley she was in.

On the bright side, if they both survived this, maybe he'd be angry enough to come back and berate her.

Trying to forget the twelve foot drop, she climbed over the fence, struggling as the wooden posts cut into her hands; fighting to pull herself over and let out a little cry as she hung for a moment; squeezing her eyes shut and dropping down on the rough ground.

When she scrambled up to her feet, she wiped her bleeding hands on her pants, feeling the sting as she ran over to Oliver's side. He was struggling to his feet, and as appreciated as it would be, she didn't think that it was a thank you on his tongue.

"What in the hell are you doing?" Oliver barked at her.

She ignored him, trying to steady her hands enough to reload the crossbow, when Oliver saw that Irina was stumbling up from the ground, blood dripping down her arm as she came their way, gripping in her hands a knife that she pulled free from her waist.

"Felicity!" Oliver yelled, grabbing her wrist and yanking her body behind him roughly.

For the second time that night, she landed roughly on the ground, the crossbow falling from her hands. The knife missed them both, Oliver swung his head back to see Felicity picking herself up from the ground, yanking the broken glasses from her face.

He struggled to get a handle on the crossbow when he realized he'd lost the knife in the scuffle.

As Irina came at them, bellowing for Vitaly, Felicity yanked the bag off of her shoulder, closing her fist around the taser gun and dashing out of Oliver's shadow; pulling the trigger when they were feet apart, letting out a sound of relief as she sort of spazzed out and collapsed to the ground.

"It worked." She turned and looked at Oliver, her voice filled with skepticism; shocked as she held up the gun. "_That_ really worked."

Oh wow, Felicity thought. She actually had this.

No, it wouldn't be that easy. Oliver knew, feeling the fuzz in his head start to clear barely as Vitaly jumped over the fence, bellowing obscenities and threats toward the both of them.

With a grunt, Oliver jumped up from the ground, seeing the silver flash of a gun in Vitaly's hand and dove toward Felicity as the gun went off with a crack.

"Oliver!" Felicity cried in terror as he fell next to her, eclipsed just barely from Vitaly by some aluminum garbage bins.

"I'm fine." He said through gritted teeth, feeling where the bullet tore through his shoulder.

He pressed the crossbow into her hands.

"It's loaded. He looked her over, realizing that she did grasp the seriousness of her situation. "You've got to do it Felicity. I can't…"

He shook his head as his vision started to cloud up, still seeing Vitaly coming for them.

Oh god, Felicity thought, feeling a twinge of panic as she took the bow. It was a lot different up this close and personal.

"I don't have my glasses!"

"Felicity!" Oliver yelled, gesticulating angrily with his hand. "Point and shoot, or you're going to die!"

With something approaching a squeak of fear escaping her mouth, she did what he said, jumping up and pulling the trigger.

The bolt passed through Vitaly's stomach, and Felicity watched with wide eyes as he collapsed to the ground, making guttural type sounds.

"Get the gun." Oliver told her, "Go, now."

Felicity listened to him, unable to shake the thought that she'd probably killed someone—as much as a little place in her mind reminded her that if she hadn't, he'd have killed her and Oliver. She tried to avert her eyes as she did so, feeling a small sense of relief as Oliver followed, seeming to struggle along behind her.

She highly doubted that he'd let her take him to a hospital, and she only hoped that she could handle what was wrong with him. He really, really didn't look good.

Felicity crouched down near the still body to grab the gun, and picked it up. She turned back to Oliver, glad that this was over.

Before she took a step, Vitaly's hand shot out, grabbing her around the ankle and the gun sailed from her hand. Felicity let out a cry as she fell to the ground, his hand tight around her ankle, leering at her like an animal ready to attack.

Pushing through the haze and pain, Oliver dove for the gun, picking it up and double tapping him in the chest.

"I-I thought I killed him." Felicity said, her voice trembling as she scrambled away from the dead gangster.

A shiver passed through her as she yanked the black leather bag from the ground, trying to pull herself together.

"No." Oliver said, eyebrows furrowed together, wavering slightly as he handed her the gun, flicking the safety on. "Your fingerprints are all over this. Put it…"

He gestured toward the bag, grimacing in pain. Oliver pressed his hand against his side, feeling the warm gumminess of the blood sticking his shirt to flesh.

Felicity took it, shoving it into the bag.

"I thought I killed him," Felicity said, glancing back the way of the man once.

"No." Oliver said, knowing that this was for the best this way.

He'd have had to kill him anyways, the last thing Felicity would need to live with was thinking that she'd killed a man. Innocent or not.

Oliver wasn't going to let her live out her life with such a thought hanging over her head.

"I did." He told her.

This was why—this right here was exactly why he pushed her and Thea away—of all people, he could not pull them into this kind of danger. They were both too close to him, and close to him was close to getting killed.

He couldn't always keep the people he loved safe.

"Oliver…" Felicity felt him falter as his hand brushed against her shoulder. "Oliver!"

Before she could grab him, he collapsed.

"_Oliver_!" Felicity brushed her hand over the leather jacket, pushing it to the side and seeing the bleeding wound below his shoulder blade.

She had to get him out of here, and preferably before the knife wielding brunette woke up.

"Oliver, c'mon Oliver!" Felicity shook him, "Oliver, wake up!"

It didn't seem to do anything, and she bit her lip, apologizing in advance.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She recoiled, curving her hand over his shoulder and pressing her thumb against the wound.

With a growl of pain, Oliver was conscious again, with Felicity hovering over him her blonde hair wildly hanging out of the ponytail, eyes studying him carefully.

"Oh thank god." She breathed, running her hand over her hair. "I thought I would have to call Digg."

"No." Oliver shook his head roughly, grabbing her wrist as she pulled him up, throwing her arm around his waist to help him. "You can't call anyone—no one, Felicity."

A little shiver of déjà vu ran up her spine.

"Okay." Felicity said nervously, nodding her head. "I promise."

Oliver lurched along, Felicity tightening her arm around him as they made the precarious trip to the car.

_Car_. Felicity cringed.

_Not remotely the most illegal thing you've done. _Today_._

Maybe the same people who reupholstered her car would be able to get the blood stains out of Emily's leather.

. . .


	4. This is How a Promise Breaks

Far From Paradise

_This is How a Promise Breaks_

. . .

Note: Thanks to everyone who has been sticking with this story, and I'm sorry about the delay. School and work struck, and now I've finally had some time to sit down and work on my stories. Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy! Chapter 5 will be up in a week, maybe two. Between _His Girl Friday_, and _More Interrupts Than Coitus_…and uh, life, the plate is getting full.

. . .

Thea hadn't been back to The Glades since coming back with Roy a week after The Undertaking to find his house absolutely leveled. She'd been struck by this sickening wave of horror when she saw the house caved in; as she couldn't help thinking...what if he hasn't gotten out? What if she lost him too?

"_Oh my god, Roy," Thea covered her hand with her mouth as she took in the sight of splintered wood and shattered glass where his house used to stand. "I'm so sorry...it took—took everything from you."_

"_Thea, stop it." Roy pulled her against his chest and held her tightly. _

"_You lost your home, Roy."_

"_It hadn't been a home in a long time,__it was just a place to sleep." He told her,__"And I didn't lose everything by far."_

_Roy tilted her head up, and looked at her with such a fixed surety in his eyes__that a tingle ran through her body._

_She was in love with him, and even though the world seemed to shatter around them, it hadn't taken that._

"_I've got you. And you're all I need."_

She honestly didn't think that she could survive losing Roy. He was the only thing that got her through—was _getting_ her though, every day, this hell that her life had turned into.

"Don't worry." Roy squeezed her hand, apparently sensing her anxiety as they walked through the city, and assuming it was the ragged, third-world street they walked down. "It's fine."

Compared to the other side of town, this actually wasn't so bad. It was difficult to navigate the streets by car, so they left the SUV in the parking lot at Verdant, hidden from any potential thieves (Roy's idea) by a fallen billboard.

"It's better than I thought it would be," Thea said looking around as they walked down the street.

Some of the buildings had the windows broken out, and the streets were filled with debris. Rotting wood, ash...she'd seen the reports of a few fires that had spread through both sides of The Glades. Down here, the fires spread rapidly because of all of the incredibly dry, aged wood, and started fast because of the faulty wiring that was made worse by the earthquake.

They passed others in the street, and a couple times, Roy pulled her close to him as a defensive preemptive strike.

She knew he was worried, and they had argued about it-loudly, both of them passionate in their convictions.

"_I think you should stay home." Roy told her, speaking through the door to her bathroom as she changed into some jeans and a t-shirt._

_Anything to look less like the trust fund baby, who Roy was apparently very concerned they would try and come after with a thirst for blood._

"_I'll talk to her, and find out where we can find this__Diggle__." Roy said, "It's for the best, Thea."_

_She yanked the door open, and narrowed her eyes at him._

"_Not in this lifetime." Thea snapped back at him, "I'm not just going to sit around like some helpless little girl, Roy. I've done that before. I'm going to find my brother."_

"_Thea, you promised to let me take care of you." Roy said, "The best way for me to look after you is not for you to storm into somewhere—" _

"_Somewhere where everyone hates me?" Thea said, with a slow nod of her head._

"_Thea…I…" Roy was caught at a loss for words._

"_I know." She told him, "You think I blame anyone? I hate me. I hate that my parents, who I thought were these__borderline perfect, loving—good people…I hate that they could do this, not just to me but hundreds of people. I hate that I can't fix it, okay? There is nothing that I can do—the only thing that I can do is try and find my brother."_

_Thea looked him over, "You've__gotta__let me have this Roy, I need something to hold onto. I've got to hope that somewhere out there Ollie is okay."_

"_You listen to me." Roy said sternly,__folding to her will. __"Got it?"_

"_Okay. Good." Thea smiled, "Got it, Commandant Harper." _

Being on the streets wasn't like anything she saw on TV though. Children played up and down the street, some laughing, some sad and dejected, and she turned to watch as a group raced by on their bikes.

"It's just another block this way." Roy said, looking her over as she lingered. "Your feet hurt?"

"No." Thea shook her head, staring at the makeshift box homes that lined the alleyway.

It looked like there were a dozen—probably more—families who were squatting in the dank backstreet. There was one in particular she couldn't pull her eyes from, a mother—probably not much older than she was—with her baby cradled in her arms and nursing her, trying to shield her from the dirt, and noise, and mess.

No one deserved to live like that.

"Thea, no." Roy said as she tried to pull away and go down the alley. "You can't."

"But I have money." Thea whispered in his ear, "I can help her—I can help all of them."

"And what about the hundreds more in dozens more dark alleys just like this one?" Roy asked, "Thea, I know that you want to help them, but you can't. You walk down there and start handing out money…it just isn't safe."

He pulled her away, a deep frown creasing her forehead as she thought about it.

"You can't save everyone." He told her, "And I'm not risking you down there. I'm not saying they're bad people—I'm saying that when someone is scared and desperate, they do things that you wouldn't expect."

"Okay." Thea said in a quiet voice, "I know, you're right."

Still, she couldn't get it out of her mind. Because of her family, and a half a dozen just like hers these people were suffering. What was going to happen to them while she was safely ensconced in the ivory tower that was Queen Manor with her boyfriend and an army of bodyguards?

"Here it is." Roy gestured to a restaurant with one long glass window that was covered in plywood boards.

"Is that from the blast wave?" Thea asked, pointing toward the window.

"No." Roy shook his head, "It's from the people."

He loosened his grip on Thea once they were inside the restaurant, and turned to the tall black waitress holding a carafe of coffee.

"Excuse me," he said, "I was wondering if you could help me out, I'm looking for Carly Diggle…"

"Well, you found her." She said, looking Thea over with a questioning look in her eyes. "You look familiar. Have we met?"

"She's got one of those familiar faces." Roy said, intervening quickly before Thea could say anything. "I'm hoping that you could tell me where I could get in touch with John Diggle. I think he knows where a friend of mine is."

"You don't say." Carly raised a questioning eyebrow, before waving one of the waitresses over and handing over the carafe, "Table seven."

She placed her hands on her hips, and looked them both over studiously.

"It's not every day that a couple of white kids come around for John. What's this about?"

"We're not here to cause any trouble." Roy assured her, "I'm just hoping that he might have seen my friend, and he can point us in the right direction."

"Please," Thea said, stepping forward, "I know that you have no reason to trust us, but we really don't mean any harm. I'm just trying to find my brother, and—"

"Oh my god…" Carly let out a sigh, she gestured for the two of them to follow her, and then leaned in close to Thea. "Just tell me that you don't have a death wish."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Roy asked, looking protectively over Thea.

"Back here." Carly said in a quiet voice, leading them to the back of the restaurant and through the kitchen.

"And _you_," she directed to Roy, "You should know better than to bring Thea Queen into the Glades. I remember you. You're not doing that girl any favors. You know what it's like down here now."

Thea was torn between annoyance that this woman found it so easy to berate her boyfriend, and the desire to know more about her, and how she seemed to be connected to her brother.

"How did you know?" Thea asked as they followed her into the back.

"I have a good memory for faces, but it wasn't until I saw those Philip Lim shoes that I figured it out for sure." Carly said, knocking once, before pushing the door open, and peeking her head in.

"John," she said, with a nod of her head. "Come on out here, will you?"

"Everything okay?" he asked, stopping abruptly as she stepped out of the door and saw Thea and Roy.

An uneasy, uncomfortable look passed across his face but he didn't look altogether surprised to see her. Well, she thought, at least he knew. Maybe it also meant that he knew where her brother was. Oliver had practically treated his bodyguard like a friend…well, when he wasn't almost getting him fired by ditching him.

"What are you doing down here?" he asked Thea.

"Looking for my brother." She said, "I was hoping that you might be able to tell me when the last time was that you saw him. We've been trying to find him."

"Oh boy," Diggle sighed, then turned to Carly. "I've got this."

He pushed the door open, and gestured for them to step in.

"You shouldn't be in the Glades, certainly not without protection. George shouldn't be letting you off the premises without someone to look after you." Diggle said, "It's not particularly safe out there for anyone right now—"

"Especially not a girl like me. Yeah, I got that. A few times now, actually. Also, not that it's relevant to the running issue here, but George resigned around the time you did." Thea said in a stubborn tome, ignoring the free chair in his office. She preferred standing. "I've started running out of options, though. My brother doesn't have very many friends, and I know that you were one of them-sort of. I was hoping that you could tell me where you saw him last."

Thea bit down on her lip, feeling overwhelmed with this sense of hope. That they were getting a step closer.

"He's the only family I have left. I've got to find him…I need to know that he's okay." Thea glanced around the room, her gaze settling on a photo of Diggle with that woman and a little boy. "Something makes me think that you can probably get that."

"I understand that, more than you know." Diggle told her, following where her glance lay, a sigh escaping as he ran his hand over his head. "But the last time I saw him was when I sent him off in the car after the scuffle with that photographer. Trust me, if Oliver doesn't want to be found…it's going to be hard to find him."

"Too bad for him then." Thea said crisply, she was damn tired of Oliver getting to run the show.

She wasn't going to spend her whole life being left behind.

"He fell off the ends of the earth once before, and they told us—they told us to give it up, that he was dead; but you know, there was always a little piece of me that believed that he made it. Don't you dare tell me to give up on him now. I'm not giving up on Ollie. Not when he needs me now, more than ever. You don't give up on family."

She got up to walk out the door, Roy closing the door behind them when Diggle gave in with a tired groan; rubbing the palm of his hand over his mouth, like he was already regretting what he was doing.

"I wasn't the last person to see him." Diggle said, shaking his head as he told her, with a hesitant and regretful look in his eyes. "Felicity Smoak. She works in IT at your family's company. She and Oliver….they have a close working relationship. He went to see her after the incident. Maybe she can tell you...help you put your mind at ease."

"Thank you." Thea told him, turning back to look at him. "Thank you so much. That's all I needed. I just wanted…a chance."

"I just hope you get what you're looking for." Diggle told her with a twinge of remorse in his voice, then turned to Roy with a slightly menacing look. "Watch out for her. Those streets aren't a safe place for any girl-anyone-right now."

"With my life." Roy said.

As they walked back through the kitchen, and into the restaurant, Thea stopped.

"What are you doing?" Roy asked her, glancing around in confusion.

"What I _can_." Thea told him, pulling her wallet from her purse.

At the register, she surprised Carly handing her a gold credit card, and a small wad of cash.

"What's that for?" Carly asked, eyebrows stitched together in confusion.

"There's a bunch of families in the alley next to your restaurant." Thea said, "I have no limit. Just charge it to me—I'm good for it."

She went to turn, "There's a mother there with a baby. I think she needs milk."

"You think this is going to fix it?" Carly asked her in a quiet voice. "They're only a fraction of the suffering in this town, sweetheart. You can't fix everyone with a sandwich."

"I'm not a superhero." Thea said, dropping her wallet back into her purse and fastening it shut. "I can only do what I can do."

She turned away, slipping her hand into Roy's.

"I know what you said," She told him as she followed him out of the restaurant, "But I had to."

"That's why you were wrong in there." Roy told her, "Right now, you might just be Thea Queen, but to those people tonight, who have nothing…you've their savior. You're giving them something to believe in."

"Everyone needs something to believe in." Thea said, glancing at him with a smile. "You taught me that."

"Yeah, well…" Roy sighed as they walked down the street. "I might have to stick to believing in the power of goodness through my girlfriend. You know, there hasn't been a single report of the vigilante since The Undertaking. Either he gave up on the city, or he's dead."

"Maybe he's just biding his time." Thea said.

"I just think you might have been right," Roy said with a twinge of regret. "Maybe he wasn't who I thought he was after all."

. . .

Diggle picked up the phone in his office, and stared at it for a moment, before dialing.

Carly wasn't going to like this, he had promised her that he'd wiped his hands of any involvement with Oliver or the Queen family, and he'd practically broke, trying to compel Felicity to step away and stop looking for Oliver. He was worried—no, he was sure—that if she kept looking, she would find him.

"_I know you want to save him, Felicity." Diggle slipped into the booth across from her, catching the look that Carly was giving him. _

_He knew how she felt about him, Oliver might have been blind to the torch that Felicity carried for him, but he saw the way she looked at him. Saving him wasn't just about the mission—it was about him._

"_Don't give me that look, Digg." Felicity told him, "I didn't come here for a lecture. I just thought that maybe you would have changed your mind, that after looking around and seeing how much worse the city has gotten that you'd want to try and change things too."_

"_That's what you're not getting." Diggle told her, "You can't help someone who doesn't want your help. You can't save a city that's intent on sinking. One person can't do it all on their own." _

_A slow, sort of sad smile crossed Felicity's face as she stood up, sliding out of the booth._

"_Don't you think I know that? It's why I came to you."_

It was inevitable, as adept at hiding as Oliver was, Felicity was as equally skilled at finding what—who—didn't want to be found. It had started to look like a frighteningly high stakes chess game that could only end with someone getting hurt.

He dialed security at the Queen Manor, finding it unbelievable that George had quit. The man had hand selected him to meet with Mrs. Queen, and not only was he thorough; George was the sort of man that didn't just take this as a job. George genuinely had cared about the Queen family, particularly, he'd seemed incredibly committed to Moira Queen.

If he was being honest with himself, he'd started to wonder while The Undertaking was approaching if George had a part in it.

"Security." The unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line, "Please state your code."

"Zero-zero-two." Diggle said, "John Diggle. I'm calling for George."

"Sorry, Digg, it's Jake Rancher." He said, "George resigned."

It was true. Diggle was shocked.

"Who's in charge down there, now Jake?"

"Well, it's a little bit of a mess." Jake told him, "Some of the team resigned, some just never came back after that business. It's not so bad though, it's just the girl."

Diggle felt a little tweak of annoyance. Right, that was why he didn't like Jake Rancher.

"Yeah, yeah…the girl. Giving you much trouble?"

"Nah," Jake said, "She doesn't leave much. Pretty much stays holed up in her wing of the house with that boyfriend of hers. Mrs. Queen wouldn't like it, but hey…what kid wouldn't take advantage of this?"

"Doesn't leave?" Diggle said, "Funny, because I just ran into her down in the Glades."

There was a long pause of silence on the other line.

"Well," Jake said finally, "You know how it is, how they can slip right past you. Luckily—"

"Save it." Diggle said, "You're going to need one hell of a better excuse when Oliver comes back and finds out his sister wasn't only cavorting around the Glades, but has been freely playing house with her boyfriend."

"He's coming back?" Jake asked. "I heard he left for Europe."

"You heard wrong. Is Kat still there?"

"Yeah, she's been working on media control. They loiter around the grounds worse than ever."

"Connect me to her." Diggle said, relieved that Jake hadn't questioned what business he had since technically he was no longer on the Queen payroll.

"Okay." Jake complied easily, seeming relieved to be done with Diggle.

"Kat James." She said.

"Kat, John Diggle. Remember that favor you owe me?"

"Yeah." She said, "Sort of how I also remember that you don't seem to be working here anymore—too bad though, we could use you, Digg."

"Thea Queen is walking around in the Glades without any protection." Diggle told her, "I don't know who screwed that up."

"Rancher is in charge." Kat told him, "Once George, and Marty, and Diana left he had the highest seniority."

"Who is supposed to be head of her detail?" Diggle asked, "I know Diana had been."

"Rancher." Kat said flatly, "He sort of lets her do her own thing since the axe incident."

"_Axe_?" Diggle asked, "What the hell is going on down there, Kat?"

"It's a strange time, Digg." Kat sighed, "Especially when you're calling to collect on a favor."

"It won't break the bank." Diggle told her, "I need you to drop what you're doing and take over for Thea. I want you to stay on her—don't let her shirk out of your sight. Keep me in the loop on her, okay?"

"Okay." Kat said, with a little bit of a laugh in her tone. "You're with him, aren't you?"

"Who?" Diggle asked.

He knew exactly who she was talking about, and it would be easier if he had been.

"Oliver." She said, "Tell him I'll take good care of his sister."

"Yeah, well if you can keep the boy out of her bed, I'm pretty sure he'll double your salary." Diggle told her. "Thanks Kat."

"Hey, you're the one who saved my ass." Kat told him, "I'll be in touch."

As he placed the phone back on the hook, there was a knock on his door again. So it was going to be one of those days, wasn't it? And the hits keep on coming.

"Come on in!" Diggle called, leaning back in his chair.

He closed the screen to his laptop as Carly walked into the office, with the disapproving look on her face, almost like she knew exactly what he was up to.

"What's going on John?" Carly closed the door behind her. "Why is it that everyone comes to you when they're trying to find Oliver? Felicity, the girl…do you really know something? Is Felicity hiding Oliver? I watch the news, you know. He didn't show up for that hearing, and if Felicity I harboring him while he shirks his duty—"

"If she was hiding Oliver Queen," Diggle said, feeling as close to a sense of amusement over this as he had since The Undertaking as he could get. "Trust me, she wouldn't be hanging around here."

"John, I _know_ that you thought that he was different—"

"Carly, we've talked about it a hundred and one times." Diggle groaned, scrubbing his hand over his face.

"Well, I like cutting it even." Carly told him with a snap of frustration in her voice. "You told me that you were done with him, that you wouldn't have anything to do with them. So why were you telling the girl that she should go to Felicity to look for her brother?"

He should have known that Carly would have been eavesdropping.

"Because I'm not going to stand in the way of someone trying to pull their family together." Diggle told her, "Oliver is the only family she has left, and she might be the only person in the world he can pull himself together for."

"But you're not looking for him?" Carly asked him, with a look of quiet desperation in her eyes. "You're not actually looking for him, are you?"

"Carly, _no_." Diggle stressed. "I promised that I wouldn't, and I'm not."

"Okay." Carly nodded her head, seeming to believe him and letting it go.

The bell at the counter rang then, and Carly kissed him on the cheek before getting it.

"Okay John, I believe you."

_So that was it_, Diggle thought as the door to the office closed behind her, _he didn't even need Oliver's help to fall into a hole of lies and deceit. He was doing just fine with it on his own._

Diggle couldn't even rank them in varying degrees of dishonesty. He didn't know the last time he'd been entirely honest with someone. When he had left Felicity in the basement, he had intended to follow through with what he'd told her.

He'd had no intent of continuing to chase down Oliver when Oliver wanted nothing to do with them. The problem with this was, however, he'd already lost a brother. There was no way of rescuing Andy, of ever getting him back—but there was still hope for Oliver.

There was no getting Felicity involved in this. He couldn't put her safety at risk when he didn't know for sure that he could keep her safe. Diggle just hoped that she would let go.

He supposed that he had overestimated how strong her survival instinct was, versus her feelings for Oliver.

As he flipped the computer open, watching again the security cameras in the Glades that were still up, realizing how useful this trick was. Diggle might not have had access to Felicity's full bag of tricks, but he knew that Glades, and he knew Oliver and sooner or later he would catch him and drag Oliver back out of the gutter if it killed him.

Thea Queen wasn't wrong, you don't give up on your family, and family didn't end with blood.

. . .

She didn't necessarily think that the Hood was the savior that Roy thought he was.

Thea sighed, resting her head against the window as Roy drove carefully out of the Glades and back into the city. It was worse than the first time she'd come back; almost like the city was continuing to degenerate, like the earthquake had never stopped.

Looking in on those poor people living in the alley, the dirty people who lined the streets in the Glades…she hadn't ever really seen the sort of poverty that this was before. Sure, her dad had dragged her along on his little learning trips to the soup kitchens and shelters in an effort to get Oliver to realize how he'd been wasting his life, and the sort of power they could have to change things for the better…but now more than ever she realized those trips were for Oliver.

Oliver was the one who was supposed to be this paragon of perfection; it was on his reluctant shoulders that the Queen mantle were meant to hang. He was the one who every one of their parent's hopes and dreams hung on. She might have been daddy's jewel, but Oliver was their prince.

She was allowed to tag along, because she cried and begged to be treated like a grown up. Thea had cajoled, and jumped at the opportunity to tag along with her big brother, and so Oliver would chuckle and shrug, telling her it wouldn't be any fun.

But she would plead, because anywhere that Oliver was going was fun, and he was with Laurel all the time.

So, he persuaded their dad, and she went along and was _terrified_.

Thinking of it now, Thea felt a sickening turn of her stomach, a blush of mortification on her cheeks. She'd been every bit as spoiled and selfish as everyone thought she was. Crying just because some woman with grizzled, dirty hands touched her pretty shiny hair, hiding at her father's side and gagging at the smells in the kitchen that she didn't like. Holding her nose up to the food when it was their time to sit at the folding tables with everyone else and partake in the simple meal.

More than anything else in the world, she wanted to be someone else than that little girl. She wanted to be someone better.

_I'm going to be better_, she thought. _I won't be that self-indulgent jewel forever. I can change too._

"You forgot your seatbelt." Roy said, glancing over, and seeming to sense that she was feeling less than a hundred percent.

It had been one more lead to fizzle out. Thea felt discouraged. Sure, they had the name of some girl that her brother had known at the company, but it didn't mean anything. She was sure that since Ollie had returned from the island he had met any number of girls.

"That's a big concern I know, with all these cars on the road." Thea retorted sarcastically, sitting up and putting it on regardless of the mostly empty road.

When she looked back out the window though, she was finally stunned into something other than apathy.

"Roy! Roy, stop!" Thea yanked on her boyfriend's arm, ignoring as he swore quietly when the wheel jerked slightly, pointing across the street at a busy alley.

"Are you crazy?" Roy asked her, "I could have just killed us, Thea."

"Roy, look across the street!"

Thea's eyes narrowed as she studied the scene.

She might not know much, but if there was one thing she could recognize from even a mile away was the back of the cop who hated only one person on earth more than he hated Oliver. Where Detective Lance was, Thea couldn't help but to think, the Hood, and restoring her boyfriend's faith in him couldn't be far away.

"The strip club?" Roy raised an eyebrow, and shrugged after pulling the car against the sidewalk opposite the club. "I guess if I was a billionaire on the run that would be my first step."

"No, not Oliver." Thea rolled her eyes, besides that wasn't Oliver's taste.

As much as it disgusted her to consider the thought, Oliver had a penchant for good girls—and she meant good girls in the most literal sense. If he was holed up with a woman somewhere, she could guarantee that she was much less the stripper type, and more the quiet librarian type. They sort of seemed to fawn over him too, whether it was her brother the bad boy, heart breaking billionaire, or broody billionaire.

"In the alley." Thea gestured to the low-key detective and plain clothes investigators who were combing the scene. "Tell me that's nothing."

"Yeah," Roy scoffed, "Someone probably broke out a window. Who knows? It's not like the crime rate in the Glades has decreased recently. Since when are you so interested in the work of the Starling City PD?"

"Shut up…" Thea practically whispered, watching the scene intently. "Detective Lance doesn't investigate broken windows and petty robberies."

"Could have fooled me." Roy said.

Another time, she might have laughed. Now though, Thea was watching the scene, particularly the cop who was coming down a ladder that was planted across the side of the building. Unwilling to pull her glance from the window, she rifled in her bag blindly for her phone.

"What are you doing?" Roy asked her, sighing and shaking his head. "You realize that you're only setting yourself up for disappointment. I've played this game before—"

"Right, uh uh…" Thea said, quickly trying to get some kind of picture of the cop, or more specifically the short arrow looking thing he was holding in his hand. "Remind me again, how many people in Starling City rely on arrows as their thing?"

She handed her phone off to Roy, pointing at the half-size arrow—what was that then, a dart?—in the officer's hand.

"That's one of his." Roy said, with an excited gleam of possibility. "I've seen them. So…"

Thea smiled slightly, seeing the spark in her boyfriend's eyes that had been missing since the Hood appeared to give up, or possibly be marked as dead. It wasn't Oliver, but it was a small win.

"So, it looks like your hero is back in business." She gestured to the wheel, feeling a little spark of excitement herself. "We better get out of here though before Detective Lance spots us, or we'll be the ones in handcuffs."

. . .

Getting Oliver into her apartment had been a struggle. She'd forgotten how heavy he was. It had taken fifty dollars, and a badly constructed lie to persuade Henry the doorman to help her get Oliver into her apartment—hoping he didn't think that she was a news worthy psychopath who had slipped something in his drink. Even more than that, she hoped that as scruffy and messy as Oliver looked that Henry wouldn't recognize him as Oliver Queen. A story like this in the paper was the last thing he or his family needed.

However, Felicity decided, as she got another whiff of the liquor on his breath. It wasn't like the story she'd given Henry had been so far from the truth.

_What's happened to you, Oliver? _Felicity felt a wave of sadness as she looked over him, wishing that there was some magical solution to fixing him. Sewing him up, and treating the wounds was only going to do half the job.

_You're better than this. You're a hero._

Oliver leaned back out of her reach as she tried to treat the ugly, ragged cuts on his body. Compared to cleaning and treating the gunshot wound, this was almost simple. At least, her stomach wasn't turning and threatening to expel its contents onto her floor.

In the beginning, she had faltered, her hand shaking nervously as she pulled his shirt open, and was faced with deep, discolored scars that accompanied the newest wounds. She didn't think that all the scar tissue was on the outside either.

"Oliver if you don't stop this, it's going to kill you." Felicity shook away the catch in her throat as she looked up at him, and his emotionless green eyes.

Oliver seemed to have decided to ignore her.

She gritted her teeth, biting down on her tongue. It was too easy, and she wasn't taking the easy path. She swore that she would save Oliver if it was the last thing she did.

"I've had worse." Oliver said, in an impersonal, almost unfriendly tone.

_As if I haven't noticed?_ And she had, time and time again since she'd met him. At one point, it used to keep her up at night, wondering what exactly had happened to her on the island. She couldn't pinpoint when exactly it had stopped though.

Now Oliver gave her new nightmares to face.

Felicity swallowed a little nervously, as she pushed him back into a chair. A chill ran though her body as he complied, and she set to work at dabbing the cut on his face with a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic. He looked like he'd lost a fight against a Mack truck. None of that was what really got to her though, when she looked into his eyes, it was like he was lifeless. He didn't have that spark that the Oliver she knew had.

"I'm not talking about _this_." Felicity said, determined to take her stand and say her piece as she took his face in between her thumb and forefinger and turned it slightly rougher than she meant to.

Oliver had run away from everyone else, but she wasn't letting him do it to her.

She didn't know where the hero went to, but Felicity was willing to do whatever it took to bring him back. His family needed him, this city needed him, and as much as she didn't want to admit it; as much as it scared her to admit it, she needed him too.

He made a promise to her, that they would save the city. It wasn't a promise she would let him break.

"I don't regret it." Felicity said in a strong voice. "I still believe in you, Oliver. A lot of people do, you know."

Oliver ignored her, as he seemed to do with everyone these days.

"How did you find me?" Oliver asked her, his voice ripe with annoyance.

"I used a psychic." Felicity said her voice tinged with enough sarcasm to mask her fear.

She was scared. Oliver was fractured. Felicity didn't know who he was before the island; the playboy enigma that the city had been fascinated with, but she knew the hero that had given her something to finally believe in. This guy wasn't him.

This guy was a shell with a death wish.

"That's funny". Oliver grunted as she stitched the cut, none too gently. "I never mentioned how funny you are."

He took a swig from the bottle of gin he'd unearthed in the kitchen, while she had been fetching her first aid kit. Felicity let that go, they had bigger problems to deal with at the moment apart from his blood alcohol content.

"You're sort of a jerk right now." Felicity said in a quiet voice as she finished stitching his cut. "You know that?"

"Yeah." Oliver smiled grimly, "You're getting the picture now."

He raised the bottle to her before taking a swig.

"Oliver, look, I know…" Felicity shook her head, setting the tools down. "It doesn't matter that you don't care about me. It's never been about me, but you should go back to your family at least. You know how much Thea loves you, and she's hurting…"

She bit down on her lip, her voice trailing off. Somehow, she couldn't quite form the words herself. Felicity could hardly imagine what Thea Queen was going through, and all she wanted was her brother to be there for her.

"Your mother loves you too." Felicity reminded him, nervously turning the needle over in her hand. "And as mad as you are at her, Thea's having to deal with this now—she's eighteen, and her mother…"

"Say it." Oliver said, his voice terse. "Our mother is a criminal, and probably going to prison. Hundreds of people are dead, hundreds more are injured, leagues of families are homeless...do you really need me to keep going Felicity?"

"You _want_ me to say it, Oliver? Fine, I will! Yes, all of that is true and your sister is upset, her world is falling apart and she's only eighteen years old. She needs her brother! She needs you!"

Felicity threw down her arms in frustration, feeling this unbelievable urge to hit him.

_Honestly, she thought that Oliver needed Thea too. He needed something to anchor him here, keep him human, and she was coming up with nothing._

"And not this you. The you that you were when I met you. So you know what? Abandon the arrows, drop your bow, and let the city pick itself back up, if you have to; but she needs you Oliver. The rest of us can get by, but she needs for you to go be her brother."

Oliver was fuming at her, in the dark silence, through gritted teeth, he made it startlingly clear that he was irate.

Felicity supposed that it wasn't just that he was angry with her; but that he was feeling so many different shades of anger that he couldn't quite settle on one. In one fell swoop she'd hit him at his two most sensitive areas: his sister, and his honor.

That was fine with her, because frankly, she wasn't so very happy with him either right now. This was not her guy—not the hero she believed in, not like this. She was angry, and disappointed, and hurt…but most of all, she was scared.

She was scared, because she didn't know what to do. Oliver was the leader, he was the one who gave them some sort of direction, and he made the mission. Taking the lead now, having it fall on her shoulders now to make the right decisions…it terrified her.

She wasn't the hero. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

But looking around, she didn't really see any other option.

He hadn't really said much to her while she was digging the bullet out of his shoulder, save a few colorful obscenities. Felicity had been too nervous as she was working on it to do much other than try and focus on what Digg had taught her, and if this stubborn jerk would have just let her call him; well, maybe it wouldn't have hurt so badly.

For that, he had no one to blame but himself. She didn't have the military medical training—she was the IT girl—all in all, Felicity was pleased that she got through it without throwing up. The old Felicity never could have done this.

Oliver wasn't the only one who'd changed, she thought.

"Felicity." Oliver snapped, pressing his hand against his bandaged shoulder, like he was reprimanding her.

She internalized the sharpness, refusing to let it get to her. Oliver was not going to intimidate her. If he was upset now, she could only imagine what a mood he would be in if he knew how she was spending her night now.

Her glance drifted past him, to the files from Detective Lance that she'd left sitting on her coffee table. Oliver could reprimand her and her actions all that he wanted to, but the fact of the matter was—he had no one to blame but himself. He brought her into this, he made her believe that one person could make a difference in the world, and she wasn't walking away from that.

Felicity returned to Oliver, looking his battered face over, and feeling a wave of remorse. He'd been hurt protecting her, he'd killed to keep her safe—_but maybe, just maybe if you hadn't found him he'd be the one who was killed._

"You should be fine…mostly." Felicity said, with a cool clip to her tone as she taped gauze over the wound. "You're lucky that I have a well-stocked first aid kit."

"Lucky?" Oliver said, getting up from the stool in her kitchen, incredulous at her response. "Felicity, do you understand that you're lucky to be alive? What you did was so incredibly…"

Oliver gestured angrily with his hand, but she stood her ground refusing to be intimidated into submission. If anything, it was good to see Oliver feeling something. Anger had propelled him once, and if it could do the same again, she was fine with it. He needed to start feeling something again.

Just getting him to stay, to care was the first step.

"Clever?" Felicity supplied, cocking her head. "You know, I always was an overachiever."

"Stupid." Oliver told her with a shake of his head, pressing the palm of his hand against the sore wound.

He winced, pacing the room like a caged animal, then turning back on her as he walked around the room, stopping at the other end of her couch, like being around her required that sort of space

"You've always been naïve, Felicity. God, incredibly so!" Oliver shook his head, clearly frustrated with her. "But I've never seen you act so…suicidally stupid! You're lucky to be alive after that idiotic stunt!"

"Oh, _oh_…" Felicity nodded her head, feeling the irony of this situation as she nodded her head, throwing her arms out in his direction.

That was…._fine_. Maybe he had saved her, but she had saved him too! She deserved that much recognition. This time, they had saved each other.

She never would have imagined that wanting to save Oliver would result in wanting to kill him.

"Oh my god, you're so right, how could I be such a ditz? You know, it's the blonde thing—I'm so sure it's that, or that I'm just a silly girl. I'm obviously too dim to understand the complexities of this situation!"

She felt her blood boil as she looked at him now. It still felt like he could see right through her, like he could latch onto every ounce of insecurity that she was feeling, and….

Felicity squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and took a calming breath. _He's trying to push you away, he's trying to make you not care. Don't take the bait._

"You're scared and looking for someone to cling to." Oliver told her, turning his back on her and looking out the balcony door with a sigh. "I'm not that guy, Felicity. You'll have to find someone else."

The cold comment zinged through her like an electric shock. Of all the things that Oliver could say to her, of all the ways that he could choose to try and hurt her, he took the one thing that hurt the most, and threw it in her face.

His back still facing her, Felicity turned on her heel, yanking her jacket off of the hook on the wall, and scanning the room for her bag. She knew that if she stayed her another minute, another second, all this emotion would boil over into tears and he would be right. She would only prove to him that she was a naïve girl out of her element.

Besides, this time she was walking away. This time, she wasn't going to be the one left behind.

"What are you doing?" Oliver asked her, as he turned around to see her scanning the room for her bag. "Felicity…"

"_Oliver_!" Felicity cried out, trying desperately to make him see that what he was doing was crazy. "I don't care. Whatever it is—I don't care. You're wrong. You're wrong and you're tearing everything down. Everything that we worked towards for half a year, and there is nothing that you can say that will make it okay! You can't make throwing yourself down in the gutter okay!"

He wasn't only hurting himself. Oliver was so far past being able to only hurt himself. There were too many people who loved him.

Thea, his mother, Diggle (Felicity knew, no matter how mad Diggle might be…he wouldn't give up on Oliver, not really)…

_Me_.

Felicity bit down on the inside of her mouth, feeling the swell of emotion when she looked at him. She wasn't stupid. She was well aware of the fact that they both easily could have died today.

"C'mon Felicity..." Oliver tilted his head up toward her and shook his head once before sighing. "You said it yourself, you were only in it to save Walter. Walter's fine, and there is nothing holding you back from putting 100 percent into your job."

_You are—were_, Felicity thought. _I wanted something more than a job, I wanted what you were offering, Oliver._

Oliver's voice softened for a moment, as if it had occurred to him that somewhere during his tirade, he had gone too far, been too hard on her.

"I'm not stopping you. As a matter of fact, you absolutely should. Don't worry about me. Try living your life instead of managing mine."

Felicity's eyes narrowed together, and she knew she was getting that pinched feeling that came from trying to not cry. And she would not—no, she would not cry in front of Oliver.

"Fine." Felicity said in a high pinched tone, swallowing over the lump in her throat.

Finally, she saw her bag, resting on the table next to where Oliver stood, pretending she didn't _feel_ anything when she brushed against him. Pretended it didn't get to her at all when his hand grazed her arm.

She remembered the files that Detective Lance had given her on the table, the first aid kit nearly obscuring them. She grabbed them roughly, and the kit tumbled to the floor, garnering Oliver's attention to her again.

"Felicity," Oliver asked, his eyes following the path of the files. "What are those? What are you doing with police files?"

He strode across the room towards her, his glance riveted upon the files.

"Work." She snapped at him, shoving them in her purse. "And since you're still not caring, it's not really any of your business, is it?"

"Felicity," Oliver stepped closer to her, grabbing her arm as she turned away from him. "Whatever you're involved with, just drop it. It's dangerous."

"Well, I guess I'm not the only one who can't manage someone else's life." Felicity told him.

For the first time that night, Oliver seemed stunned into silence. _Good_, she thought, wondering how he liked being the one on rocky terrain. Their places were switched just as easily when Oliver smoothly yanked the files from

Felicity stopped for one moment by the door, shaking her head at him. "You win, okay? I was the naïve, stupid girl you think I am. I mean, I'm the one who was stupid enough to believe that you would change us all, and change this city."

She squeezed her eyes shut as she turned away from him, realizing she'd broken the vow she'd made. But what if she wasn't capable of it? You can't save someone who won't let you.

"Felicity!" Oliver called after her once she reached the door, scrubbing his hand over his mouth. "Felicity, just…don't go. Not if that's what you're going to. It's going to get you killed."

"Oliver, make up your mind!" Felicity told him. "You don't get to be in this half-way, and you don't have the privilege of telling me what I can and cannot do. The great thing about walking away, is that you don't have to worry what trouble this stupid, naive blonde head is into."

Oliver appeared to be struggling with some response to that, still holding the files out of reach.

"You know what, that's fine. Why don't you hold onto those in case you change your mind?" Felicity said.

Heading into the hall, she slammed the door closed hard behind her, not even bothering to wonder if he had it in him to come after her.

. . .

"I'm starting to think that I don't know anyone as remotely well as I think I did."

With a tired sigh, Thea tossed the tablet she had taken from Tommy's down on the table, and turned on her heel to face Roy. So that was a waste of petty theft, anyways.

After not being able to find Felicity at the office, she was discouraged and annoyed all over again. It was like the world was conspiring against ever making it so that she could find Oliver.

"I mean, c'mon, I knew him my entire life. If we're being realistic—I've actually spent more time with Tommy than my brother!" Thea threw her arm out, gesticulating crossly at the tablet. "He wasn't a complex guy, and I've tried everything. His birthday, his first pet, his favorite Coldplay album, his mom's name, her birthday…"

She dropped down on the couch next to Roy, folding her arms over her chest.

"And I thought I was the one in this family with all the secrets." Thea shook her head as she looked over at him, "You ever think that maybe someone isn't exactly what you thought they were?"

"You mean sort of like the way I thought you were a spoiled trust fund baby?" Roy said with a grin, trying to wheedle a smile out of her. "Now I know that you're—"

"Completely amazing, extraordinarily beautiful…." Thea supplied, leaning her head back and looking up at him. "Careful how you finish that sentence Harper, remember my aim is impeccable."

_God, those eyes_. Thea was pretty sure that it was his eyes that she fell in love with first. They were filled with this clarity, this quiet determined confidence that assured her every time that she looked at him that everything was just going to work out.

"Just the girl for me…as long as you'll have me." Roy kissed her, pulling back and wrapping his arms around her.

Thea leaned back against his chest, feeling a tickle of conviction herself.

"Everyone has secrets you know," Roy told her. "It doesn't mean that you don't know them-sometimes, it means they don't know themselves. And when people are keeping secrets-in my experience-it's for a good reason. It doesn't have anything to do with how much you love someone."

Thea laughed a little, "Wow."

She figured it would be better not to ruin the moment by letting him know that he'd sort of been channeling her brother there. That might make things a little weird.

"Wow what?"

"You're a smart guy, Roy Harper." She nudged him with her elbow. "Smart enough to crack the tablet?"

Roy snorted, "Sorry, I think we reached the cap on my genius."

Thea groaned, shaking the tablet in frustration.

"We need help."

Roy didn't disagree. As confused as Thea was, nothing was seeming any clearer to him. A mystery tech girl, a bodyguard who defected to a burger joint...and it was only the beginning of things that just didn't add up.

They weren't any closer to finding Thea's brother, but they were closer to finding—proving that the Hood was still out there, and he felt like they were close-so close to finding something, to something happening.

He couldn't help but to think that just maybe, if they found the Hood, well, then he could help them. It sounded crazy, but he felt like the Hood could help them find Oliver. He felt like the Hood was the kind of guy who would help them.

Telling Thea all of this, it was too crazy now. It wasn't like he had proof of anything, just a lot of hoping and guessing, and one address that he had stolen from reception when they dropped by the company to try and find Felicity Smoak.

Apparently she'd defected too, because no one seemed to remember seeing her come to work since The Undertaking. If they hadn't bumped into her at the police station, Roy would have been ready to accept that their only fresh lead on the search for Thea's brother was gone too.

He just hoped that she'd be the missing piece to the puzzle. If he could find Thea's brother, she would be so distracted by him he bet she wouldn't even notice his search for the Hood.

It was hardly a lie, just a secret he would keep until he had enough proof that she wouldn't be disappointed.

"Don't worry." Roy held his arm around her. "We'll find this girl, and at the very least she should be able to get into this tablet. That kind of thing, it's like her job right?"

"We'll do it together." Thea smiled, nodding her head at her boyfriend.

"Together." Roy agreed.

. . .

He couldn't keep sitting in the Queen Manor. Nothing made sense anymore, and he couldn't help the swirling vortex of questions that were sucking away at him since they had gone to the Glades.

It felt like the things that he knew, he didn't…totally know. Like he just needed one thing to come up, one concrete piece of evidence that something was right, that he was doing the right thing before his head exploded.

Slipping away from Thea's new bodyguard, a young slim brunette woman was easier than he would have thought. Slipping away from Thea after he had promised her that they would do this together though, that filled him with guilt.

Roy needed to figure some of this out though, and as badly as he needed to know about the Hood, finally find some answers about life—he wasn't going to risk Thea.

It wasn't like he'd ever really thought that there was a plan in the world, or that the world had a plan for him. In his experience, the world was filled with a lot of random, cruel, unpredictable violence interspersed with moments of good.

It wasn't until he met Thea though that it felt like there was any kind of balance at all. Before her, it pretty much just felt like it was split into bad and worse. After Thea, it was like his life just changed.

Everything worth happening, did.

The Hood was a part of that. Thea thought that he worshiped him, but that wasn't it. It wasn't even partially it. He'd never been a religious guy, but The Hood had come into his life at the very moment that he'd given up, he gave him a second chance at life at the very same moment that he'd been offered a fresh start, when he'd been forced to take some accountability for his life, and...

Roy let out a breath as he hurried through the crisp night air, knowing that he was taking a risk. It wasn't the streets he was afraid of. People were scared after The Undertaking, and it wasn't necessarily that the world had gotten worse, it was that it was spreading. Before, all this violence and all this fear had been contained in the Glades. Just as long as you didn't drop below East Central Street, you were just fine to carry on with your life.

But now it was everywhere. He wasn't scared for himself, he'd lived it his entire life. He'd been born into the Glades, and he figured he probably would die there the same way a lot of guys did

These people though… Roy glanced at the people who scurried past him on the street, they had no idea how bad it was going to get.

The police were out of their element. The gangs might be scattered now, it might look like a lot of random, unorganized violence, but sooner or later someone would organize it. After they were organized…he knew that it would get bad. There were a lot of powerful guys in the Glades, and there were a lot of people who wanted revenge. They wanted the city to pay.

It scared him because he had someone to worry about. The choices for who they could target for payback were getting slimmer and slimmer—he'd never say it to Thea, but if some of those people found her brother he wasn't going to make it out of there alive. Oliver Queen made a perfect scapegoat—not only was he the golden son, he had stood by all this time to do nothing as his company crashed.

Now the people who hadn't lost their homes in The Undertaking were going to lose them to the banks. He didn't understand how one person could be that selfish.

There were people who were going to take the tragedy, and take all this building fear and anxiety and turn it into something horrible. Maybe he was just some kid from the Glades with a GED, but he had to try and do something.

Because of her. Thea had decided that he was worth believing in, and he was not going to let her down, or let anything happen to her.

God, he didn't know why, but for some reason she had decided that she loved him. He'd never figure it out. She was a girl who could have anyone in the world, and she chose some broke, nobody from the Glades.

He wanted to be somebody, someone that she could be proud of. Roy shoved his hands deep in his pockets, hood covering his face in the night as he rushed down the street

He didn't want to be a nobody his whole life. His father was a nobody rotting in the Starling City jail.

He wanted to be better than that. Roy _needed_ to be better than that. So…maybe he wasn't some superhero in a hood...but he wanted to be something more than he was.

He felt bad for doing this without Thea, but before he could bring her into this, and before anything else happened, he needed to get some answers.

After she went to sleep, he'd slipped out of the manor, and set on a path to find this girl.

There were a lot of things that he...it didn't seem right. He knew that Tommy and Oliver had paid off an inspector in the Glades, and _maybe_ it was connected to the Undertaking. He didn't want to think that a guy like Tommy, who'd been the only one apart from the Hood could have a part in that…

He didn't believe it though. But there was something that _just wasn't right_. Especially this Felicity Smoak.

None of it had clicked right away, but when he saw a picture of her, he recognized her right away. He'd seen her at the club time and time again, usually leaving the basement late at night; sometimes with Oliver. She was always there, always with him in that locked basement.

Once he'd thought she was Oliver's girlfriend, but Tommy had corrected him. _She's a close friend._

_Who was always around?_ Roy realized, which in and of itself wasn't so weird.

Until he considered what he overheard at the police station, the conversation she'd had with Detecitve Lance, and the police files that were peeking out of her bag when Thea bumped into her.

Except, she lied to the cop telling him she didn't know Oliver that well, and then Diggle telling them that Felicity had been the last person to see Oliver. Why was she lying about it? And if Felicity wasn't at the police station answering questions about her boss, what was she doing, and why was some lowly computer repair girl, being slipped police files?

Why did everyone seem to be full of half-truths?

He had a million questions, and then some, and not even remotely enough answers.

...

Fine.

So she was lying to herself.

Felicity pulled her jacket around her shoulders, a coldness in the early winter night air. She was angry at herself from walking away from Oliver, and she was angry at him for pushing her away. They'd proved each other right in the worst way, and she hated it.

However much he had hurt her, she knew that he was hurting himself more. She also saw that as cruel as his words had been—she saw a glimmer of the Oliver who would take a bullet for her as he yanked the files from her hand.

Not that it would stop her, he had to know she had backups of the research she was doing at Verdant.

With the anger and frustration bubbling over in her chest, she made the way from her apartment to the parking garage.

She had lied in a way, the city was worse than ever and it needed the emerald guardian to protect them. Felicity had been warming up to that name, it was what he is—was. Oliver was a guardian.

Felicity had never really known such blinding anger until she met Oliver. It was like he was throwing his life away, like…

Like if Tommy didn't get to live his life, he couldn't live one either.

She glanced around before hurrying across the street and down the next block to the garage.

Ironically, Malcolm's plan to wipe out crime had done the opposite. Crime had skyrocketed. Her neighborhood, in the heart of Starling City once a sort of artsy haven for the middle class had become a place where one didn't go out at night unless they were willing to risk the lawlessness that came out of this tragedy.

So she was always on alert, always waiting and ready with the vigilance that Digg had warned her about in the beginning, and the taser she'd bought illegally. She still couldn't bring herself to carry the gun, it didn't matter; even after his lessons on arms and the pointing and the triggers…she didn't think she could do it.

If this argument with Oliver had reminded her of anything, it was that she hadn't changed nearly as much as she thought she had.

With a sigh, she entered the garage, rifling through her purse for her keys and hoping against hope that in her brutal storm out she hadn't left them hanging on the hook. Somehow she thought the sting of her leaving would be impeded if she was to return to face Oliver again and retrieve her keys.

"Arrow Girl." The Russian voice pierced through the darkness, and hit her in a wave of eclipsing icy fear.

So, you didn't kill her then. Good, that's good, right? Nervously, Felicity swallowed stopping where she stood.

"Drop your bag."

Felicity complied and turned around, seeing her with a new guy this time. A tall, muscular man with thick dark hair and a short, closely trimmed beard. She caught herself cataloging his features, as if she was actually going to survive this.

She shouldn't have walked away from Oliver. He was right. She was so far out of her element. Even if she screamed, she knew that he would never get here in time—even if he could hear her.

"Where is he?" she asked, accent shading the consonants sharply.

"I um…" Felicity took a slow breath, glancing down at her bag and the taser inside of it.

"Where is he?" She shrieked, "Alexi!"

"No!" Felicity screamed, certain that this was the part where the story of Felicity Smoak would come to a rapid end. "No—"

Alexi grabbed her yanking her blonde hair back in one hand as he held her in a vise like grip with a silver knife against her throat that gleamed in the subdued light.

"Irina, she knows nothing." Alexi said, pressing the knife closer into her throat, making her afraid to so much as breathe.

"Where is Connor Hawke?" Irina demanded, "You are not as stupid as you look. You rescued him with your arrows, and killed Vitaly."

Felicity supposed now was not the time to nitpick, with a knife threatening her carotid artery, and two murderously angry Russians who seemed ready to take it out on her. Besides, she may as well have been guilty of killing him.

"Why—why should I tell you?" Felicty asked, grasping at the single chance she could figure as she felt the knife breaking the skin. "You'll kill me anyways."

Irina chuckled, gesturing Alexi to fall back.

"I'm ashamed. We've been rude."

After Alexi stepped away, Irina laid a hard blow to the side of her head, and she stumbled to the floor of the garage. She let out a cry of pain that echoed in the dark night, realizing that this time she really was on her own.

On the ground, she heard Irina yelling but it felt like a dull buzz in her head. Alongside, Oliver's words seemed to echo like he'd known this was coming. She was just a girl, just a smart girl…

_Be smarter. _

Her heart racing, thumping painfully against her chest, she dug her nails into the pavement and crawled up, chancing a glance at her bag less than an arm's length away.

"I want Connor Hawke!" Irina bellowed, "I want to rip his lungs from his chest—"

There was a sound somewhere in the garage, and for a moment Felicity's heart skipped. _Oliver_.

"Go see what that is." Irina ordered Alexi. "Take care of it."

While she turned, Felicity grabbed for the taser. Slipping her hands into her open bag and clutching her hand around the cold, black plastic device, and hiding it inside the sleeve of her sweater before looking back up as Irina returned her attention to her.

"Don't be stupid enough to die for that man, I assure you, he would not return the favor. Help us, and I'll grant you a reprieve from Alexi's knife."

"Yeah," Felicity swallowed, "He's a monster. You're right. I'd be stupid to die for him."

"Ah," Irina smiled widely, nodding her head. "You are a smart girl."

"It's not worth my life. But you have to promise, promise you won't kill me." Felicity said.

"You have my most solemn vow as a Christian woman." Irina said, "I'll harm not a hair on that little blonde head."

There was a muffled cry across the garage, and Irina turned.

"Alexi!" She called, "What are you doing?"

Silence filled the garage again, and with a racing heart and heavy breathing Felicity lunged at her with the taser. Irina seemed to see the attack coming, and kicked it from Felicity's hands. Felicity tried to run for it, but Irina tripped her, punching her hard in the side.

"Help!" Felicity screamed, "Help me!"

Irina had gotten ahold of her own knife, and Felicity felt a painful slash of the blade across her arm as she struggled to shake off the taller Russian woman and reach the taser.

"I'm going to enjoy tearing that blonde head from its shoulders." Irina yelled.

Felicity struggled, freeing her arms and elbowing Irina in the face, hearing the crack of bone. It gave her a second's time extra to pull from her onslaught and grab the taser. This time, Felicity didn't hesitate.

She grabbed it and shot the electrodes at Irina, who howled in pain with the shock. For a moment, she relaxed until she heard boots on the pavement behind her and swung around with the gun in her hands, adrenaline zinging through her body.

"Hey! Stop!" The male voice shouted, holding his hands up in surrender to her. "I'm not here to hurt you."

Taking note of the small lean frame in the dark hoodie she realized he was not one of them. He was probably the one who had distracted them.

Felicity pushed her wild, wavy hair off of her face, and looked him over, unable to make out a face through the shadow of the hood.

Whoever he was, he'd probably saved her life.

. . .

"You're her."

It was with a stunned sort of realization that Roy turned, taking a step backwards from the petite blonde and her taser, and tugged his hood off of his head.

"Oh my god." Felicity's hands fumbled as she tried to tuck the taser away. "You're uh...huh…wow."

Her eyes went big for a moment, "Thea's boyfriend."

"Well, I guess you've got the unfair advantage," Roy told her. "I don't know who you are. Or maybe I should say what the hell you are."

"We should get out of here." Felicity said, gesturing to the woman on the floor of the parking garage who stirred slightly. "There's someone else, and it isn't save. I highly doubt this was a lucky coincidence."

"Not really many of those left in Starling City." Roy shoved his hands in the pockets of his dark red hoodie, and followed her. "I wouldn't worry about the big Russian guy, I took him out."

"He was a big guy." Felicity said, her head tilting slightly to the side as she looked him over.

"Finesse beats brute force everytime." Roy told her.

She stopped on front of a dark blue coupe, struggling to get her keys from her bag.

"Hey," he asked, eyebrows stitched together as he saw her face look like it was about to crumple into a mass of tears. A ugly cut ran through her eyebrow, and around the edge of her eye. "Are you okay?"

He saw the dark bruise on her face, and the matted bloodstain on her arm.

When he'd come looking for Felicity Smoak this hadn't been what he expected. She wasn't the computer nerd he expected.

She seemed a lot tougher than he would have pegged her for being.

"Fine." Felicity smiled across the car, holding up the keys. "I'm going to be fine. Thanks for your help."

She unlocked the car, and nudged her head towards him, "Get it."

...

She had allowed a small part of her to carry the smallest of hopes when she'd been attacked.

It hadn't felt entirely out of the realm of possibility that Oliver had come for her, that Oliver had shaken off the grey despair that seemed to envelop him to rescue her.

But no such luck.

She glanced into the passenger seat, and saw Roy glancing into the backseat once, and then a second time.

Hopefully, Emily had retained her forgiving sprit, because this car wasn't only getting a lot of mileage—it still had that awful stain in the backseat from where Oliver had bled after their first confrontation with Irina.

"What?" She asked, and the look on his face, furrowed brow and frown that marred a young face with old eyes.

"Who _are_ you?" Roy swallowed, "The seat-it's covered in blood."

A wry smile crossed her face as she thought of the old Oliver. _Her_ Oliver.

"You think I need to be told that? It's been a rough couple of weeks." She told him.

"You're telling me." Roy said, "The thing is...you don't seem all that surprised, or concerned. You're not what I expected."

"Remind me to be insulted later." Felicity smiled slightly as she pulled out of the parking garage, "No offense, but you're not exactly what I expected either. You have great timing though, I thought the clock had ticked out on me. You saved my life."

"I'm no hero or anything." Roy said. "I heard a scream."

"And you came running." Felicity told him, "If that doesn't make a hero, what does?"

"I've been trying to answer that question for a long time now." Roy told her. "Is that uh…look, you gotta level with me. You've not just some geek squad girl. Who are you? Who were those people—what is this?"

Felicity felt a smile cross her mouth, a spark that she'd been missing for too long now.

"I guess that depends. Are you looking for the easy answer, or are you looking for the truth, Roy?"

Roy swallowed as he looked over at her.

"The truth. I want the truth."

. .


End file.
